


Turkey Day: All the Trimmings

by Haven126



Series: Turkey Day Universe [2]
Category: MacGyver (TV 2016)
Genre: Action, Action/Adventure, Adventure, Drama, Gen, Mystery, Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-05
Updated: 2020-11-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:47:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 156,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27394474
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haven126/pseuds/Haven126
Summary: A collection of prequels/missing scenes for the Turkey Day series. Also crosspost from FF.net for safety.  Ch 1: Jack calls his annoying EOD tech 'Mac' for the first time. Ch 2: On his worst days, Mac's almost died alone. Chs 3 & 4: Cairo. Ch 5: Mac learns to trust Jack's brain, not just his aim. Ch 6: Mac learns about adapting. Ch 7: Saito meets Mac. Ch 8: Mac tells Jack about his parents. Ch 9: Jack has a dream. Ch. 10: DXS meets Mac
Series: Turkey Day Universe [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2001202
Comments: 10
Kudos: 16





	1. Lentil Stew With Ham

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

Also, I freakin' give up. I guess this little writing habit is sticking.

-x-

**AFGHANISTAN – KAPISA PROVINCE**

"Dude, I'm telling you, that was lentil stew."

The driver of the humvee pulled off his eye cover to pinch the bridge of his nose. He wasn't surprised the kid's eyes were shot – it had been a hell of a day, and he was looking forward to sunset himself.

Preferably on base, with some hot chow that hadn't been sitting in a brown pouch for a couple years. MREs hit the spot when you were good and hungry, and they were a hell of a lot better than they'd been when he'd joined the army back in '93, but one encounter with a bad one could really put a damper on your day.

Case in point.

" . . . lentil stew is red, Dalton."

Jack shook his head with a tired chuckle. "Not after it's been sittin' in a hundred degree tent for a few months it ain't. 'Lentil Stew with Ham' gives half the guys in my unit bubble guts, same as you."

MacGyver released his eyes and stretched them wide, blinking rapidly a couple times and focusing on the road. "Bubble guts?"

"You know." He gestured in the general direction of the EOD tech. "Stomach crampin', face a little green, sweat on your upper lip there, and that funny gassy boilin' feelin''? Bubble guts."

The kid grimaced a little, and the humvee sputtered as he shifted in his seat, momentarily letting off the accelerator. "I, uh, I figured that out from the context, Jack. What I meant was . . . you know what, nevermind."

"Yeah, you California boys have a different word for it, I'm sure." He kept his eyes on the road, though Dalton would be the first to admit that he wasn't always able to pick out the pattern to the clumps of dirt and sand that indicated they had anything to worry about. "Or maybe not, all you Hollywood types eat is nuts an' berries, am I right?"

He was about two weeks into his unexpected next tour, and so far had no regrets. At least not major ones. Spending the day baking on a ridge watching over EOD nerds clearing one sad little strip of road hadn't been all that entertaining; hell, he thought MacGyver was the slowest EOD tech the Army'd ever produced, but the more of 'em you put together, the slower they all seemed to move. At least he'd had the other overwatch snipers to chat with.

But it meant he wasn't chatting with his own EOD nerd, and they'd been paired now for seventy-eight days. Back when he'd been shipping out, there hadn't been much need to get to know the kid beyond the job and the how do you do's. After Paktia Province, well . . .

Way more to Carl's Junior that met the eye. It was about time he got under the kid's skin, and learned what made him tick.

". . . you sure are, Jack. Our diet is strictly nuts and berries. I'm a vegetarian, did you know?" His voice was laced with sarcasm.

Jack smirked to himself, his eyes automatically scanning the next ridge as they ground through a hairpin turn on their way northeast on the one and only highway that passed through the province. Some haze to the southeast attracted his attention, and Jack reached up and pulled down his own eye cover, glancing over the edge of the glasses. Without the polarized lenses, it was a lot harder to make out, but it wasn't sand.

"You're a pacifist, son, I'll give you that, but you are also a carnivore, same as the rest of us. I get between you and salisbury steak, I'm liable to lose a hand." Jack didn't take his eyes off the haze.

"Well, who doesn't love a good dehydrated beef patty."

"Vegetarians," Jack responded, pushing his sunglasses back up and shifting his rifle from his right side to his left. He rooted around the inside of his vest a second, pulling out his map.

MacGyver glanced over. "There's only one road, so I'm pretty sure I know the way back –"

Jack checked his watch, estimating their travel time, and scanned the topography. He glanced back up, trying to marry it to the horizon, and the haze became a veritable mushroom of thick black smoke.

MacGyver was still looking his way and saw it too; he brought them to a quick stop, ducking to try to get a better view through the window. "Jack-"

"Yeah, man, I see it." He keyed his radio. "Snakebite Zero Three, this is Snakebite One One, over." He thought the ridges might give them a problem, but the response came back quickly.

"This is Snakebite Zero Three, go ahead, over."

"We've got some kind of activity goin' on off the main drag, about three klicks from Betty. Got smoke, and lots of it. Requesting permission to contact the COP, over."

MacGyver gestured towards the black cloud. "That was a pair of explosions, see the way the smoke column's-"

"Yeah, man, I know what a detonation looks like-"

The radio hissed, and they both fell silent. "Stand by, Snakebite One One."

Jack scanned the ridge again, looking for any sign of hostiles. "Smoke's too close to be Belda proper, but there ain't nothing else out here worth blowin' up." He traced a quick circle on the map, drawing MacGyver's attention to their position. "Back two hundred yards there was an old riverbed. It'll take us in generally the right direction –"

The blond's eyebrows rose. "Yeah, but if we head through that, we'll have ridges on both sides. It'd be a perfect kill zone -"

Jack held up a hand. "How about you leave the strategy to the meat eater, alright? I know it's a perfect kill zone, I taught you that."

The kid eyed him. "Actually, you didn't teach me that, Jack, I-"

"I damn well did. Know how I know that? Because that's what you walk yourself into every damn time I turn my back on you for more than three seconds-"

The radio crackled. "Snakebite One One, be advised Betty's got a range going about a klick from your position, over."

Betty was the callsign for the Belda Combat Outpost. It hadn't seen any direct action since 2013, mainly because there wasn't a damn thing worth having between Tagab and Nejrab besides a few farms spread here or there. The purpose of the outpost was to provide logistics support to traveling units and keep the main road open and secure.

Having a range – blowing off ammo – made sense given it was nearing September, and if you didn't use your ammo allotment in a given year, Uncle Sam would decide you obviously didn't need all of it and cut your allowance the following year. It was SOP to go through all your spare rounds before the final inventory was turned in so you didn't get shorted ammo, just in case. That being said, Jack couldn't think of a single thing you could do with M60 machine gun rounds that would produce that result.

He looked over at Carl's Junior for a gut check, and the kid's face showed just as much doubt. "Maybe they needed to detonate some claymores, but that's . . . that's a _lot_ of explosive to set off at once."

And it was awfully late to still be running a range. It would be dusk in less than half an hour.

Jack tapped his radio again. "Snakebite Zero Three, we're seeing evidence of a pretty big explosion. Repeat request to contact the COP, over."

MacGyver didn't wait for a reply. He threw the humvee into gear and executed a three point turn around.

Jack suppressed a sigh with effort. "Dude, I know you know better than to drive up to an active range. That's live ammo, and they don't know we're here. Anybody ever teach you EODs about friendly fire?"

"No, Jack. We EODs don't go through any basic training." The sarcasm was back full force, and now that he'd turned them around, he could watch the smoke columns out his own window. "If that was caused by claymores, it was about thirty of them, densely clustered. Even if it was a disposal, no one would blow that many at once."

Jack started to pick up what the kid was laying down. "You think the second explosion-"

"Was an accidental detonation," he confirmed, laying on the accelerator.

They'd almost made it back to the riverbed when dispatch in the TOC got back to them. "Snakebite One One, proceed to site. Range is under a cease fire, repeat range is under a cease fire. Betty would appreciate EOD assist with disposal of UXO, how copy, over."

In the driver's seat, Mac groaned softly, and the humvee started to slow as they made their careful way up the riverbed. There was still sweat beading on the kid's upper lip, but Jack realized quickly the moan had nothing to do with bubble guts.

"Sorry, Jack. Looks like it's gonna be MREs for dinner too."

The Delta huffed out a sigh. "I take it this is gonna take a while, even by your standards, huh?" UXO stood for unexploded ordinance, which was in Jack's opinion just as dangerous as a mine or a damned IED. You never knew when they'd decide to explode. Sometimes never, sometimes next week, sometimes about ten seconds after you'd given up on them and approached.

He got a sideways look. "That'll depend on what didn't get blown up in that second explosion."

Jack keyed the radio. "Snakebite Zero Three, good copy, advise safest approach vector, over."

Driving that one klick took them almost twenty minutes. However, they did have a fairly gentle natural ramp to the range, and there was enough greenery around that they had sufficient traction to climb to the plateau. The TOC had advised they approach from the south, which miraculously was actually the direction they were coming from, and MacGyver eased the humvee over the last hump.

The black smoke was still rising, indicating something was still burning, and as they cleared the hill, Jack could make out about a dozen men standing a good eighty yards from what looked a hell of a lot like a dumpster fire. Charred or actively burning ammunition crates lay in haphazard lumps around the main blaze, clearly having been tossed by an explosion.

Jack whistled through his bottom teeth, and MacGyver brought the vehicle to a halt, just staring.

One of the crates close to the main blaze exploded, making all the soldiers in front of them duck, and Jack couldn't help a startled curse. "Holy shit! Are those _mortar rounds_ flipping through the air?!"

MacGyver's mouth had fallen open. ". . . yes, I believe they are."

"Jesus H." Jack waited for the noise to die down before he kicked open the door, slinging his rifle to his back as he dismounted the vehicle. None of the soldiers had noticed their approach; it looked like they were most of a squad of combat support and combat services support soldiers.

Awesome. Operational and logistical support, as opposed to troops that actually used weapons. Not the sort of soldiers you really wanted overseeing a weapons range.

Jack glanced up the line of oblivious men, eventually locating a lieutenant bar on one of their collars. Several other mortar rounds had cooked off in the fire in the meantime, keeping the men occupied and allowing Jack to take a position at the lieutenant's shoulder, hanging his hands casually off a couple pouches on his vest.

Carl's Junior had finally gotten over his shock and pulled his gear together – literally all of it, everything he'd had in the humvee was hanging off his pack – and came up in full battle rattle behind Jack, taking a preparatory breath. Jack held up a couple fingers, waving him silent with a smile.

In the deepening dusk, the fire started to burn down a little, and after about thirty seconds of silence, a soldier to Jack's right addressed his lieutenant without turning. "So. . . shall we call EOD?"

The lieutenant didn't even have time to respond before another man scoffed. "Nah, I think we got this."

There was a powerful explosion, somewhere behind the main blaze, and MacGyver started forward with the gait that said he meant business. Jack gave in and coughed.

The butterbar lieutenant glanced at him, not really paying attention, and Jack gave him a cockeyed grin as another crate of mortars went flying into the air, more of them unexploded than not.

"Well, that'll put the damn damn on your day."

The lieutenant blinked at him, taking in his uniform, sans any type of patch or identification. Then he turned and gave MacGyver a once-over, his eyes lingering on the EOD patch.

"Waller!"

A sergeant first class on Jack's right turned, also seeming surprised to see them, and the lieutenant gave him a dirty look. "Looks like someone already called EOD."

MacGyver's bubble guts were clearly putting him on edge; he didn't bother with a greeting. "Someone want to tell me what's going on here?"

The lieutenant – Ross, his nameplate indicated – had the good grace not to visibly bristle. "It's a weapons range, son. What's it look like?"

It looked like a goddamned catastrophe, but disposal wasn't Jack's skill set, so he stayed quiet and waited to see exactly what Carl's Junior was going to make of it. If the kid gave this butterbar lieutenant half the lip he gave _him_ , it was gonna be good.

"It looks like you stacked a few dozen crates of M899 mortar rounds in the middle of a field and set them on fire, sir," MacGyver responded, in what Jack considered a fairly civil tone.

"Got a better idea?" This came from Sergeant First Class . . . Waller, apparently, who turned on the kid a little defensively. "We had two _thousand_ rounds to blow through and only two tubes." He thumbed over his shoulder, and Jack turned and studied the line. Even in the dim he could make out two mortar tubes, set up alongside half a dozen M60s. Empty crates had been used as makeshift tables, upon which sat at least a dozen pistols and M-16s.

Typically you had a range for every weapon class. Pistol range would be shorter, M60s range longer, and the mortar range would be nowhere near either of them. Rocking all that firepower on one line . . .

Jack couldn't help himself. "How much ammo did you need to shoot off?" And when the hell had they started?

The lieutenant seemed to deflate, rubbing his hand vigorously over his scalp. "About twelve thousand rounds for the M-16s, ten for the nine mils, six for the M60s, ten hand grenades, twenty claymores, about eighty pounds of M118 demo charges, and twelve AT4s."

Whoa mamma.

On the other side of the lieutenant, MacGyver's face set like stone. "What else is out there besides the mortars?"

"Whatever we hadn't had time to fire," the lieutenant replied, then shook his head. "I am so fucked."

Carl's Junior ignored the second part altogether. "Can you be a little more specific?"

"Major's orders were not to come home with a single round of ammo. There's ten of us. We fired off what we could, I got two M60s with scorched barrels, and the mortar tubes were so hot I was afraid the rounds were going to start cookin' off in 'em." Lieutenant Ross indicated his sergeant first class. "The fun really started when Waller realized we had twenty claymores but only four clackers."

Not too far off the kid's original estimate. But clearly they'd set off more than the claymore mines.

Waller tried to rescue his lieutenant. "I figured we could daisy-chain 'em, set 'em off over that little ridge there."

"Really." Jack almost choked on a laugh at MacGyver's tone.

"And if that weren't enough, we only had fifteen feet of det cord to set off eighty pounds of demo charges."

The kid turned slightly more green, if that was possible, and it took him several seconds to find the words. "So you daisy chained the claymores, facing downrange-" and he checked with the sergeant, getting an irritated nod, "and then you ringed the mortars with as much of the M118s as you had det cord for. What did you do with the rest of it?"

"We stuffed 'em into the mortar crates. Mortar should be enough to set it off."

An M118 demo charge was basically just four sheets of C4 strapped together. Jack had used the stuff extensively. You tore or cut off however much you needed, peeled off the adhesive strip, stuck it to whatever you wanted to blow up, stuffed a blasting cap in it, and boom.

But it required a detonator. Unlike some of Uncle Sam's other toys, C4 was pretty damn stable. Shooting it with a normal round wouldn't set it off, and neither would setting it on fire. It would burn, he was sure, but not explode. A guy in his unit said he'd set off a brick using a tracer round once. Jack honestly didn't know if a mortar would set it off or just splatter it.

MacGyver took a controlled breath. "Did you set any of the mortar fuzes?"

Waller rolled his eyes. "Of course we did. A couple rounds in each case were set to burst on impact."

The kid absorbed that. "And what about the AT4s?"

AT4s were anti-tank rockets – basically the biggest boom stick in the Army. He wasn't surprised they had so many, considering their primary mission was securing a heavily traveled and hardtop road, but he didn't see twelve used launchers on the line. Which probably meant –

"We put 'em in the ring of claymores. Facin' downrange, just in case a firing pin got hit." Waller seemed to think this particular detail justified trying to set off twelve anti-tank rockets using mines.

"Were you missing parts for the AT4s, as well?"

While the lieutenant had been fairly easygoing, considering the fiery cluster in front of them, apparently the kid sniping at one of his men was crossing a line. "We wouldn't have been short the tubes, the clackers, or the det cord if not for unprepared units like yours cleaning us out instead of packing your own damn supplies."

Considering MacGyver was standing there fully geared up, Jack felt that comment was undeserved, but he didn't see any reason to escalate the situation. The louie was right – he was phooked. And damn lucky none of his men appeared to be injured. The only thing worse than biffing a range and calling in EOD would be calling in medevac with them.

Instead of responding, Jack turned and tapped MacGyver on the shoulder, jerking his chin back towards the humvee. The kid took the hint and stepped back with him, until they at least somewhat out of earshot.

"Jack, that's-"

"A cluster. I got it, kid." They both flinched at another large explosion, again behind the main fire. "Well, at least that's one less rocket to worry about."

Even in the dark he could see the look he was getting. Carl's Junior dragged a hand down his face, frowning when he seemed to realize how much he was sweating. He grabbed the beige scarf he wore around his neck for just that purpose, and used it to mop his eyes and forehead. "You might as well get back in the 'vee. This won't take me more than twenty minutes."

Jack blinked, then made a show of sticking a finger in his left ear and rubbing it around. "Excuse me? I ain't sure you can tie your own boots in twenty minutes. What the hell do you plan to do with that hot mess?"

White teeth flashed across a dirty face. "Absolutely nothing."

The kid left him standing there, a little speechless, and marched back to the lieutenant. "I need to borrow four of your guys."

Ross balked. "You're not sending any of my guys anywhere near that thing-"

"You're right." MacGyver shrugged off his pack, catching it by the left arm strap and opening the main compartment. "No one's going near that thing."

Jack caught on about the same time the louie did. Ross sounded relieved. "So we just let it burn out then."

The kid pulled a red rectangular case of emergency markers out of his pack, then let the pack slide to the ground and tore into the case, dividing the stack into four unequal parts. "Actually, you're going to staff it overnight and watch it burn. If anything lands outside the field perimeter, call it in." He paused and glanced at the fire again, estimating distances. "It's going to take a couple EOD units a week to clean up this mess. Now, from which direction are civilians most likely to approach?"

The lieutenant gave that some thought. "North, south, and west are all equal opportunity. But no one comes out here unless they've lost a goat."

Mac frowned, and re-allocated his stacks. "Alright. I need two man teams. Maintain one hundred and twenty meters from the original site of the explosives. Put up one of these every forty meters. Use rocks to build a stand, and it needs to be able to stand up to a stiff breeze." He unfolded one of the signs, which bore the standard red triangle and had the word 'MINES' and a skull and crossbones. "The entire triangle needs to be visible. If you see _any_ projectiles outside the one twenty meter perimeter, back off another forty meters and mark it. One of you measures distance, the other keeps his eyes on the ground. Does everyone understand?"

Waller and the sergeant beside him nodded, and two unnamed grunts Jack christened Tom and Jerry glanced at each other, then fist bumped.

"Okay. One of you take the east perimeter, the other the north. Dalton and I will mark west. Lieutenant, you have the honors here." And he passed out the handfuls of signs to go along with his orders.

Jack carefully hid a grin as the groups complied almost immediately, coming forward to take the markers. Kid was a Specialist, one of the lowest ranks around, but when you were standing on a minefield – and that was what this range had become – anyone with a brain knew EOD was in charge, and his voice held nothing but authority and confidence.

So when the lieutenant opened his mouth, Jack almost cut him off. Almost.

"Hook up with Gabel on the north side. Find out what's keeping him." The order was for his men, not MacGyver, and Tom and Jerry nodded.

The kid was still counting signs, so Jack took a causal step towards the lieutenant. "You got guys downrange?"

"Just one. He went down to confirm detonation of the mines and rockets after the cease fire."

That was about the time Jack realized that not all of them were wearing radios.

"What frequency you usin'?"

Ross glanced at him, then frowned and keyed his own radio. "Ranger Seven, this is Ranger One. You back on coms, over?"

Both men listened to the silence for a few seconds, and MacGyver came back with the last set of signs in his hands. "I'll be our eyes-"

Jack held up a finger, silencing his partner, and after another few seconds, Ross repeated the call.

No response.

The lieutenant continued to frown. "I figured he left the vehicle to get a better look, but he should've gotten a count by now –"

MaGyver looked between them, finally dialed in. "Wait. You're missing a man?"

Jack backed up a few steps, giving himself a clear view of the field, and he swung his rifle to his front and up, using the optics to scan the horizon. It was getting damn dark, and he switched to the night setting. The IR in this particular scope was decent but he had better; he hadn't planned to be hunting targets in the dark with a giant fucking fire in the way. One thing he could say for EOD overwatch - as boring as it was, it was very unusual not to be back on base by sunset, or pretty close to it.

He picked out the vehicle after about seven seconds, Army issue, but the image was too streaked to see much detail, and after trying a few more seconds he gave up.

"Got the vehicle, can't see anyone from here. I need to get on the other side of this bonfire." He let his rifle dangle from its strap, and grabbed his radio. "What frequency you on?"

Ross gave it to him and he adjusted accordingly, noting MacGyver doing the same. "Okay. We'll head down the west side, your guys continue down the east, and we'll swing around on the north and see if we can't find your man."

The lieutenant gave him a look, once again taking in the lack of any indication of rank or specialty, and Jack started off without another word.

Of course he hadn't gone four steps before his EOD tech was abreast, his tac light on its broadest setting. "Dammit, Jack, what did I just say?"

Jack grabbed his own light, clicking it on and letting it dangle from the webbing so it illuminated the ground at their feet. Carl's Junior aimed his a little further forward, expanding their pool of light.

"Dunno. You weren't listening either?"

The kid muttered something, too low to hear, and Jack kept one eye on the ground and one eye on the fire. Truth was, he _had_ been listening to the kid, and he was keeping their one twenty meter perimeter. He was also more than just a little irritated at the situation. Mostly at whatever major gave a shiny new lieutenant such a stupid set of orders. Don't come home with a single round of ammo. You didn't give an order like that to a butterbar lieutenant. They didn't know how to interpret orders yet, all they knew was how to follow them.

And he was doing exactly what he'd been told to do. Get rid of every single round, no matter how creative he had to be to get it done. Good initiative, bad judgement.

"I take it this isn't your first fubar range."

The kid made a soft chuffing sound. "No. I don't know the actual numbers on how many hand grenades are thrown in a given time period, but from purely empirical observations, I think the true failure rate is higher than the published one."

Jack was pretty sure that meant 'hand grenades are garbage,' and he chuckled. Technically, any dud fired or thrown onto a range required an immediate cease-fire and a call to EOD. "Yeah, well, don't think you EOD nerds get called out for all of those neither. You throw a dud on the range, you have everyone shoot at it til someone hits it."

The kid shook his head, pulling a sign out of the stack and unfolding it. "I was actually accounting for that, but I appreciate the confirmation." Another mortar cooked off, but it was far enough away that neither of them even flinched.

Jack stopped at around forty meters from the front of the range line, and the kid made short work of putting up his emergency marker. They were within about fifty meters of a smaller fire, obviously flung from the main event, and Jack watched a large glob of something sizzling melt down the front of one of the flaming crates. ". . . is that-"

"Melted C4 running down a mortar case like butter on pancakes?" The kid's voice was curiously flat. "Yeah."

"It'll burn off though, right?"

"Fairly soon, based on its viscosity." The sign was up and they were moving again in less than thirty seconds. "Which is bad news for the mortars in that case."

He didn't need an EOD specialist to tell him that. "You suppose that fobbit knew mortar rounds don't arm until they've been fired a certain distance?" Otherwise setting a fuze and then dropping the damn thing would set it off, and there'd be way fewer mortar gunners running around in the world.

"Maybe, maybe not, but some of them have already been launched that distance." The kid eyed the field, taking in the fire and the still smoldering crates that had been thrown relatively clear. "Also, the displaced air pushing out during an explosion, if it hits the air inlet or drive turbine, will mimic firing conditions, and arm them even if the fuze wasn't set. Those boxes there will have to be blown in place. And the structural integrity of the interior components can be damaged at much cooler temperatures than the flash point of C4."

Which was a really long-winded way of saying any of 'em could go off at any time.

"So what got you into EOD, anyway?" Jack kept his eye on the horizon, but there was still too much light pollution to bother with the scope.

"You mean besides the money, the cars, and the girls?"

One out of three wasn't too bad. "Yeah. Besides all that."

They were nearly to their next signage stop before the kid replied. "Joined up, took the ASVAB, recruiter said I could have my pick. EOD was right up my alley."

That was more history than he'd ever gotten out of the guy, and Jack kept his tone conversational. "Big fan of the Fourth?"

Carl's Junior unfolded his next sign. "Prohibiting unlawful and unreasonable government searches and seizures?"

Jack stopped, momentarily taken aback, and watched MacGyver scavenge for rocks. "Uh . . . fourth of July, not the Fourth Amendment."

When the kid crouched into the halo of his tac light, Jack could see he was smiling. "Yeah, I know, fireworks, I was just . . . why do you do that?"

But Dalton was onto him. "I dunno, why do you do that?"

MacGyver turned a little, though he didn't look directly at him, clearly not wanting to be blinded by the tac light. "Why do I do . . . ?"

"Redirect." Jack picked up his rifle again, checking the optics now that the fire was more to the side than in front of him, and he found rocks. A whole lotta rocks. No wonder no one had tried to farm this field. Habit was too ingrained to let him speak while he had the weapon to his face, but the kid didn't offer anything up.

Jeep was sitting in the same position, all the doors were closed. No damage he could make out. He traced the most likely path someone might take to try to get a visual on shit blowing up, which he hoped to god was along the sidelines and not direct considering the Powerpoint Ranger had said he'd pointed the AT4s in that direction.

That the jeep hadn't gotten hit was a sign that the rockets were just blowing up, as opposed to launching. Then again they had a bit of recoil, letting one go off without a hand on could result in a pretty significant change of direction.

"See anyone?"

There were little bits of flaming debris here and there, bright on the scope, but nothing moving except smoke and the occasional weed.

"Not yet. Jeep's still in place."

He dropped the rifle and obediently followed his EOD tech, who was moving as if he truly expected to find someone pinned down in all that shit.

Course, there was no point in worrying about it. The lieutenant's man was out there somewhere, but just because he was away from his radio didn't necessarily mean he was dying.

"Like that." He caught back up to the kid in a couple strides, adding his light to the ground, and started a mental count of the next forty meters.

MacGyver turned his head a little, acknowledging that he heard. "Keeping you focused on the mission is a redirect?"

Jack sent a look at the back of the kid's head. "Come on, MacGyver. You know just about all that's worth knowing about the Lone Star state. My family, what my pop did in the service, best time to see the forts and avoid the tourists . . . only thing I know about you is you popped out of a hole in the ground in Califor-nah-yay."

"What can I say, Dalton, you've got the gift of gab."

"And the dulcet tones of Willie Nelson, thank you." Now that they were behind the blaze, Jack could make out a second cluster of boxes, in significantly worse shape than some of the mortar crates. Clearly the claymores had hit their mark. The AT4 boxes were nearly burned at this point, though, so he figured any of the rockets that were going to pop probably already had.

A mortar exploded, about thirty meters away, and in the brief flash Jack saw that the ground around it was literally strewn with them. MacGyver had seen it too; he tightened the beam on his tac light, getting more distance with a narrower shaft and letting it play across the field. The closest unexploded mortar was no more than ten meters from their position, and the kid's light stayed on it a long moment.

" . . . think you need to expand that perimeter there, hoss."

"Dammit," MacGyver growled. "The M118s. Did the lieutenant tell you how many rounds they fired before they gave up?"

Jack untangled that in his head. "Just that they started with two thousand mortar rounds, and fired until the tubes were too hot."

"Okay, so that's . . . ambient temperature would have been a few degrees warmer . . . uh, a couple hundred an hour. Range started up in the morning, been running about fourteen hours –"

"No, not with twelve thousand rounds to go through on the M-16s," Jack disagreed. "I doubt they even thought about the mortars until they'd chewed through the majority of the pistol and machine gun rounds. You have any idea how long it'd take ten guys to go through ten k rounds of nine mil?" The amount of ammo they'd had to blow through was staggering. It probably hadn't occurred to the lieutenant to set off any of the booms until lunch.

"So that's . . . almost a thousand mortars . . ." The kid trailed off, murmuring under his breath. Jack wasn't sure he actually knew he did that out loud. "If the detonation rates we've already seen hold true, we're looking at . . . almost eight hundred potentially live, damaged mortars on the ground here."

So it was a minefield roughly fourteen thousand square meters, and it contained at least eight hundred mines. And apparently most of them were back here. Probably got blown back by the placement of the M118 charges, which those POGs back on the line would have ensured sent the majority of their explosive force downrange.

Jack keyed his radio. "Ranger One, this is Snakebite One One, over."

Thankfully the lieutenant had finally remembered his three plus previous years of service. "This is Ranger One, go ahead."

"Any sign of your little lost sheep? Ranger Ranger, sound off."

While the men that had radios complied, Jack glanced at MacGyver, who was still studying what he could see of the field. "How far do you want to extend the perimeter?"

"Another fifty meters," he said automatically. Then he turned around and let his light play on the ground to their left. After all, if he was extending the perimeter that far . . .

After six men reported back – and all negative – Jack turned his own tac light towards the west. All he was picking out were rocks and weeds, and it seemed that's all the kid found too, because MacGyver turned around and his voice was a little more certain. "Fifty meters."

"Ranger Ranger, be advised, EOD recommends setting the perimeter at one seven zero meters, repeat, EOD advises moving the perimeter back one seven zero meters from original site, how copy, over."

It took them a few seconds to decide who was going to respond first, but once again, that butterbar lieutenant didn't let him down. "This is Ranger One, good copy, perimeter at one seven zero meters, over."

Jack released his radio, already guessing that MacGyver would rather continue forward than backtrack and move out the previous signage, and he was not disappointed as the specialist carefully took them a further fifty meters straight west, and then forward.

They traveled the next forty meters in silence, the kid didn't really need him to measure the distance, and Jack glanced around, finding and taking the highest convenient ground before scanning the range through his optics.

Jeep was right where he'd left it. Doors still closed.

"Maybe the guy's taking a nap," he muttered, lowering the rifle briefly to make sure he was on target. His high ground gave him maybe an extra six feet of elevation, it was almost useless around the rocks.

If it were him, and he'd just found himself surrounded by randomly exploding mines, he'd hunker down against the nearest rock in the lowest point he could find, and put his back to the firing line.

"So what got you into Delta?"

He mentally marked a couple positions to check at their next stopping point, then hopped down his pile of rocks and followed MacGyver. "Uh-uh, bud, we're talking about you. Why was EOD right up your alley?"

Apparently the adrenaline of the situation and the walking around had cured the kid of his bubble guts, he seemed to be moving a little more comfortably, even through the wariness that was always part of him, whenever he was off base.

"I'm good at science and math," MacGyver said dismissively. "It just fit." Then he seemed to think better of it. "And, there was a need."

Well he wasn't going to argue there. Kid was damn near a genius. And there was a reason they were assigning spec ops to keep an eye on these bomb nerds. Uncle Sam was all too aware that they were losing way too many men and goods to IEDs. Not to mention morale. EOD was on T-man's list, those patches made them just as much a sniper target as an officer's bars.

"So what do I call you, MacGyver?"

The kid snorted, peeling off the next folded sign from his stack. "Think you just answered your own question there, Jack."

"Nah, man. MacGyver is like, three syllables. I ain't gonna yell that in a firefight, it's way too long. And I sure as hell ain't gonna yell _Angus_."

"Yeah, I'd appreciate that," MacGyver told him, stopping at the next forty meter mark. "Don't tell me you're getting tired of Carl's Junior."

"Also too long. And kid, I'll tell you what, I'd call you baby brother before I'd call you junior. I'm old, but I ain't _that_ old. So what, guys back home call you Gus?"

The kid seemed to choke, gathering up a few fist-sized rocks. "No, I, uh, tried to keep it to my last name. Bozer too, so it worked out for us."

"Bozer?" Jack glanced around, finally finding a decent ridge about twenty yards away. "What the hell is a bozer? Like a bulldozer?"

The blond shook his head, setting up his marker, and Jack picked his way up the ridge, confirming it was free of anything that looked even remotely like a mortar before taking a knee and zeroing in on the spots he'd previously found.

Each offered at least some cover. He checked the nearest positions first, gradually straying further and further towards the center of the range.

"Got anything?"

Jack didn't answer. Let the kid get a taste of his own medicine. He'd been up there forty seconds, tops. When he spent an hour trying to find a target, _then_ Carl's Junior could start complaining-

He didn't have his thermal gear, he was going on shape alone, but that mound at the base of a large outcropping looked awfully smooth. Wasn't a jagged edge to be seen. He shifted laterally, trying to get the optics to show him more detail, but the shadows being cast by the bonfire made the image too hazy to see anything telling like a camo pattern.

If that was Ross's lost sheep, the idiot was danger close to the center of the range. He also wasn't moving.

Jack kept both his eyes open, grabbing three fixed points on the horizon for reference before continuing his sweep. When he finally spotted movement, a fully upright figure, he stilled, and sure enough, someone else was walking right behind him.

Tom and Jerry. They weren't making as good forward progress as he and MacGyver, but they did seem to be keeping close to the perimeter they'd been given. It helped that Jack had trained EOD leading the way.

He lowered the rifle, slowly releasing a breath. The only way he was going to get a better look at that rock outcropping was to either get closer to it, or completely behind it, so it was totally blocking the light of the fire.

MacGyver was standing below him, looking up expectantly, and he sighed and stowed the rifle, working his way down the ridge. By the time he hit the ground, Carl's Junior had already read his expression.

"You found him."

"Can't confirm. I need to be on the north side." No way were either of them walking into that mess in the dark until he was damn sure that was the guy, and he was still alive.

"Then let's get you there."

A mortar blew, setting off another nearby, and they both ducked their heads reflexively.

"M899s are factory shipped with their fuzes set to proximity." MacGyver took off, picking up the pace. "If the increase in airspeed from the main explosion or the distance was great enough, they should have armed and gone off as soon as they dropped within thirteen feet of ground. If they didn't get triggered until they were near ground, the fuze will automatically move on to the next setting until it eventually hits the delay setting and goes off."

Jack followed in his footsteps, not really sure if the lecture was for his or the kid's benefit.

"Serious damage to the electrical components due to heat or impact could cause the mortar to arm, in which case it'll go off when it moves through all the fuze settings and reaches delay, or when it reaches the impact setting and gets jostled."

"Yeah, dude, I get it. They can go off whenever, and they can set each other off."

"Not whenever," the EOD tech corrected him. "If they didn't arm, the only thing that'll set them off is a sympathetic reaction triggering the explosive in lieu of an electrical fuze, and they'd have to be within about five meters of an exploding mortar. Any less will just throw it."

"You tellin' me all this for any particular reason?"

The kid turned his head a little, and the corner of his mouth was curled up. "If you see an undamaged mortar with the fuze in the PRX setting, it's probably safe. Anything else is not."

Jack gave a sharp laugh. "And if wasn't dark as five feet up a bull's ass, that'd be useful info." He didn't need to ask why MacGyver had just offered up that little insight – the kid was already planning on scarfing down this shit sandwich, and if he wasn't careful he was going to have to take a bite too.

They reached the last stop before they could swing for the north perimeter, and they passed the jeep on the way. Nothing about the vehicle's configuration had changed. Jack still couldn't get a clear view of the mound at the foot of the rocks, but he did get a better view of one of the other sites, and confirmed it was empty.

He also confirmed there were mortars on the north side of the jeep. No one was driving that thing out anytime soon.

Which reminded him. "So what was that about a dozer?"

"Bozer," the kid corrected him, glancing at his compass before turning them due east. "Wilt Bozer. He was my best friend growing up."

Jack's first instinct was to tease the kid about having friends, but he didn't want the blond to clam up. They started the first forty meters of the north perimeter. "Wilt's not a lot a better than Angus."

"Trust me, it sounds pretty respectable when it's his mom yelling it."

"Oh, I hear that." Jack still twitched every time he heard his first and middle name strung together. Then again, his own bestie growing up had always called him by his middle name, Wyatt. "So what, you and this Bozer kid went by your last names the whole time? Or just initials? Cause B an' M means somethin' different in Texas -" Though WB and A&M would be decent variants . . .

He sensed rather than saw that he got another smile out of the kid, but there was something a little strained under his casual, "Not that abbreviated. My friends call me Mac."

"Yeah, I was headed there next, but I figured Big Mac was too much like Carl's Junior."

"Just Mac is fine."

"That and you're what, a buck sixty drippin' wet?"

They'd hit the next forty meters, and MacGyver started casting around for rocks. Jack only needed another twenty meters to put the rock outcropping between him and the fire, so he continued past.

"Hey, this'll just take me a second-"

"Relax, Just Mac, I know what I'm lookin' for."

When he found a position he liked, he took a knee and hunkered down, killing his tac light and keeping his eyes on the ground to let them adjust. When he brought up the rifle again, he did the same with the scope, letting the optics adjust to their most sensitive setting before he brought it up slowly, trying to keep the halo over the rocks out of the scope.

He finally found the outcropping, or at least the bottom edge of it, and once the optics evened out, he made a slight adjustment, knowing his target was around a hundred and twenty five meters. The first recognizable thing he picked out was the tread pattern on the bottom of a boot.

Damn.

He took a breath, let out about half and held it, and left the rifle steady on his kneepad, watching the rhythm of his pulse on the optics. Once he knew what motion was being caused by his body, he watched for anything else that would give away whether that guy was alive or dead.

MacGyver came up beside him. "What do you see?"

He saw a whole lot of not movement is what he saw.

Jack frowned, picking up his head a little. "Yell for him. Guy's name is Gabel."

For being a fairly scrawny guy by Army standards, the kid had a deep, resonant voice that carried. He politely waited until Jack was back in position before he hollered.

The boot inched a little inward.

Even with the rocks keeping the light pollution down, Jack couldn't make out much more than the boot and a hip. The soldier was on his right side, pressed up against the rocks, and he couldn't even see the guy's head or trunk, let alone if he was bleeding.

MacGyver yelled again, but there was no answer, and the boot didn't move further.

Dalton picked up his head, using his Mark Ones to study the terrain between them. "He's either injured or scared shitless." Or both. "We're gonna need to call this in."

Something bigger than a single mortar exploded, Jack didn't see it go but listened to dirt and small rocks rain down. From the direction of the main fire, he heard something that sounded a lot like a stack of wood collapsing, and Jack risked standing up and ruining his night vision.

A good chunk of the main body of the fire had fallen in.

". . . so that's probably not a good thing." More mortars exposed to more heat.

MacGyver's silence spoke volumes, and Jack ducked back down to shield his eyes and key his radio.

"Ranger One, this is Snakebite One One, over."

The lieutenant must have been sitting on the radio, because he came back almost instantly. "Snakebite One One, go ahead."

"Got eyes on your man. He's on the range, repeat he is on the range, roughly six zero meters north of the main event. EOD is evaluating. Get Betty medical prepped and on site. Also, if you've got portable floodlights, they'd be a real help, over."

"If he's injured, we may not have time for that." MacGyver dropped into a crouch beside him. "Rule number one aside, can I borrow your scope?"

 _Rule number one – we don't ever,_ ever, _touch Jack Dalton's stuff again._

Course, the kid had broken that rule half a dozen times in the past seventy-eight days. Usually saving either their lives or someone else's. And it wasn't like the rifle was going to do much good protecting them from exploding mortars.

"Well, I guess so, now that we're friends," he drawled, flicking on the safety before sliding the rifle's sling over his head. MacGyver stared at him, making no move to take the rifle, and Jack cocked an eyebrow. "Ain't that right, Just Mac?"

They'd been working together for seventy-eight days, and in all that time, the kid had never told him he preferred to be called Mac. Jack wasn't about to shut him down now that he'd finally gotten him talking.

The specialist balked. "I only need the optics-"

"And I'm not rezeroing this baby just so you can get eyes on for ten seconds. This ain't the first time you've held her. She ain't gonna bite ya."

Haltingly, MacGyver – Mac, he reminded himself - accepted the rifle. Jack knew for a fact he wasn't qualified on the weapon, but he knew which end was which, and after another moment's hesitation, he shifted his crouch to something more stable, brought the rifle up - finger outside the trigger cage - and settled in behind the scope.

Jack watched him critically. "Adjust down five degrees, you're gonna white out if you catch that bonfire."

He brought the rifle down – way more than five degrees. Jack was about to correct him when he realized what the tech was looking at.

"Kid, you're not goin' in there-"

"You and I both know it'll take my unit almost an hour to get here, and Belda's EOD is on loan to us for the cleanup op, they went back with my unit." He didn't take his eye off the scope. "If I can find a decent path . . ." He trailed off, and the radio cut off Jack's retort.

"Snakebite One One, medical will bring lights and a genny. ETA twenty minutes, over."

Jack lightly swatted MacGyver's bent leg. "See, twenty minutes and we can at least get some light up in here."

"Jack, they can't bring a helo in too close, by the time they get it set up we're talking forty minutes. I don't think we have that long." The angle of the rifle indicated Mac was working his potential paths closer to their position.

Jack squinted back at the rock outcropping. "What, you see somethin' I didn't?"

The kid leaned up away from the optics and pointed – at the bonfire. "I see a big pile of explosives covered in burning C4. The mortars already out here are safer than the ones that are gonna come out of that heap, and he's in the kill radius." The rifle was shoved back into his hands – not ungently – and MacGyver was off like a shot.

"God dammit, kid-!" Jack got to his feet, intent on following, but Mac hadn't taken a straight line approach, and he was already almost fifteen yards out. Dude was a freakin' rabbit.

Someone was approaching, from his left, and Jack spared a quick glance to see Tom and Jerry had finally caught up. He didn't acknowledge them, mashing the transmit button his radio instead.

"Ranger Ranger, be advised, EOD is on the range, repeat, EOD is on the range, headed to six zero meters north of the main event, over."

Then he brought the rifle back up to track his stupid, stubborn jackass of a tech.

MacGyver had his tac light out, but he was dodging around smaller rocks and brush like he'd already memorized the way. He slowed as he approached a cluster of four mortars, one of them ass up, and the light flashed from one to another, inspecting them. One of them looked a little charred to Jack, but Mac gingerly stepped over the line of them, giving the damaged one as wide a berth as possible, and very gently walked the next few feet before breaking into a run again.

"Hot shit, are you kidding me?!" He couldn't if it was Tom or Jerry that had spoken, but Jack silently agreed.

Mac took a wide curve to the west, almost passing the outcropping before circling back, then bounced from one shoebox sized rock to another in a game of suicidal hopscotch before making a quick leap onto the outcropping itself, scrambling across the top to slide down beside the soldier.

Jack dropped back down, trying to get a better image through the scope as he watched MacGyver carefully examine the downed soldier.

Dude looked to be dead weight, and he saw the kid hesitate, then look up, right at him.

Jack keyed his radio – easier than shouting. "Snakebite, gimme a sitrep, over."

He saw Mac's hand reach up to his chest. "He took a hit. Front of his vest is shredded, I got some blood." Despite his lack of radio discipline, MacGyver's voice sounded cool as a cucumber.

Jack knew that was for the benefit of the listening Belda squad. "Snakebite, good copy. Break. Ranger One, advise medical you have a possible critical, EOD will try to extract to my position. Break. Snakebite, switch to our operating frequency, over."

He did the same. The move was partly to cut chatter on one of Belda's operating frequencies, and partly so they could speak a little more openly. Tom and Jerry were right at his shoulder, they weren't going to miss a thing, but at least they could relay anything the lieutenant or medical needed them to hear.

"Just Mac, how copy, over." While the specialist sounded calm, and Jack'd been in enough tight spots with him that he knew the kid would keep his head, a little humor never hurt the situation.

By the tone of his reply, he could tell MacGyver appreciated it. "Good copy."

"You're not gonna get him out the way you just went in."

He could see through the scope that the blond was way ahead of him, checking the ground in all available directions. "Agreed. Think you can walk me out of here?"

Jack's first thought was probably inappropriate to broadcast. "How much does that guy weigh?"

"I'm about to find out."

MacGyver had just pulled the solider into a sitting position when a couple mortars in the bonfire cooked off. Jack used his bare eyes to track the debris thrown. None of it landed north of the outcropping, but something flaming had come their general direction.

"Cover!" He didn't bother to use the radio.

For once, the tech actually obeyed an order, dropping back down and shielding the other solider, and Jack waited tensely, counting the seconds.

Once he got past twenty, he thought they were home free, but a glance told him Mac hadn't moved. Apparently the kid knew something he-

There was a muffled explosion, very close to the back of the outcropping, and Jack dialed back in, watching hot dirt and rocks rain on the two men. As soon as it cleared up, MacGyver lifted his head a little, and Jack heard his radio click.

"We're good. I'm clear the first twenty meters in a straight line to you."

Jack took him at his word, because some footlocker-sized rocks were blocking his view. The other side of the rocks was not clear, he could make out something, though whether it was a mortar or just shrapnel he couldn't tell. He didn't want to put the kid anywhere near the stack of AT4s, just in case any of those rockets were still thinking about going off.

"After the first twenty meters, do _not_ go over those rocks, instead head northwest. I've got a three foot wide path for you but I can't see the end of it, the damn jeep's in the way."

"Northwest, three foot path, jeep," Mac repeated, a little breathlessly. He'd gotten the injured man leaning mostly upright against the rock outcropping, and he threw the guy's right up and around behind his neck, ducking down and winding his other arm between the soldier's legs. He came back up successfully and turned, and Jack could see the other soldier was probably as tall as Mac was, and built a lot studier. Kid was carrying about two hundred pounds.

Well, that'd put an end to the hopscotch, at any rate. The kid tried to gently shift the soldier's weight, then grabbed the man's dangling right wrist with his own right hand, securing his package and freeing up his left to use the radio and tac light he'd clipped to his vest. He headed doubletime for the footlocker rocks.

"Jesus, look at that guy go," Jerry said wonderingly. It occurred to Jack that this may have been the most action Tom and Jerry had seen since being assigned to the old combat outpost.

"Yeah, he's a good piece of gear," Jack replied, watching MacGyver's progress with his naked eye as the kid approached the rocks. He keyed his radio.

"Your left is comin' up, there, hoss."

Mac didn't reply, pausing to aim his tac light at the ground, and he picked out the same path Jack had found. Dalton picked up his rifle again, scanning either side of the jeep on the off chance the kid could actually make it all the way there, and even with the jeep between him and the bonfire, the rapid explosions whited out the scope.

The first one was minor, another mortar cooking off. The second one happened almost immediately after, and it was anything but. At least a dozen mortars went flying high into the air.

" _COVER_!" he bellowed, and without thinking he brought his rifle up. In one smooth exhale he was standing in old man Dover's back field, picking red clay discs out of the starry Texas sky.

Only these were olive drab mortars. Longer, narrower, and packed a little more bang when they hit the ground. They were also flipping head over tail. But they hadn't been fired – they'd been mechanically lobbed, moving much slower and in a fairly decent arc to boot. Just like a clay skeet disc.

Four were headed his way. One would land unacceptably close to the jeep.

The optics cleared, and Jack's thumb had already disengaged the safety. He knew the rifle was still in single shot mode, and he gave the trigger two gentle squeezes, rapid succession. The first round got the job done.

He pinged the mortar's fin, sending it spinning wildly off course towards the west, and he tried to sight the next closest. It took him too long to pick out of the night sky, it was too far away from the fire and not reflecting enough light.

Well damn.

Jack gave up immediately and lunged towards Tom and Jerry – who had ducked, god love 'em, but were still crouched and neither wearing a helmet – and he dropped the rifle to take them all to the ground. MacGyver's perimeter was good; none of the mortars made it closer than fifty meters of their position, but clearly they'd had enough distance to arm, because one of them popped midair, and the other one made such a hellacious boom when it hit that Jack briefly wondered if it had landed on one of the AT4 rockets.

The concussion swept over a second later, mostly just hot air, and Jack shoved down hard when one of the idiots under him tried to sit up. The dirt hit a beat later, but not much of it, and once the rain stopped Jack dared to poke his head up.

A secondary explosion went off about two seconds later, a good sixty meters or so away, and Jack shoved Tom and Jerry down again with a growled "Stay!" before bellycrawling back for his rifle. He got his right hand on the weapon, and his left on his radio.

"Mac, sitrep!"

He scanned the ground between his position and the outcropping, and outside of a couple very minor fires, he didn't see a damn thing.

"Dammit, kid, talk to me!" He clicked a few times, making sure the radio was actually still intact and transmitting, and it was.

The silence dragged on a few more seconds, and Jack was about to try again when he picked up a little static. ". . . so that was fun."

Jack released a breath he didn't know he'd been holding. "Jesus, dude, are you okay?!"

MacGyver keyed his radio but there was a pause before he spoke. It sounded like he was doing a pull-up. ". . . uh, yeah. We're under the jeep."

Jack swung on the vehicle, flicking the safety back on and confirming there were squirming silhouettes visible below the undercarriage. "Gabel still with us?"

The squirming stalled for a moment, and from the other side of the range, another mortar cooked off. "Affirm."

The jeep was about ninety meters from his position, and Jack tried to pick out a path. "Lemme know when you're ready."

There was such a long pause that Jack assumed the next thing he was going to hear was confirmation. When MacGyver finally got back on the horn, his voice was curiously reluctant. ". . . yeah, about that . . ."

Jack dialed back in on the jeep, adjusting for the best possible detail. He could make out the blond; the kid was on his back, head tilted back to look up at him. Even as he watched, the tech closed his eyes and brought a hand up to his helmet.

"You hit?"

It took the kid a second to respond. "Concussion caught us. Gimme a minute."

There was another rapid string of secondary explosions, from the main bonfire – just munitions cooking off - but Jack was about done with this range from hell. "All right, bud. I'm comin' to you."

The response was quite rapid. "Jack, do _not_ come out here! Stand down! You're not EOD!"

Jack laid his rifle on some brush, rather than in the sand, and he gave Tom and Jerry, who were sitting up, a glare that made them both blanch. "Don't. Touch," was all he said, and then he unclipped his tac light from his vest, and keyed the radio, following the path he'd picked out for Mac.

"Didn't you just get done tellin' me these mortars were safer than those ones?"

He came across the first one, laying innocently on its side, and he could clearly see the fuze was set to PXT. Proximity. Not damaged.

Safe to walk by.

It wasn't until he'd covered about twenty meters that it finally sunk in that he was taking a moonlit stroll, without cover, in a fucking field full of mines. Jack had walked into a lot – a _lot_ – of stupid dangerous situations, but this one struck him as possibly the most stupidly dangerous. The paralyzing dread he'd felt in Paktia came back full force, and Jack stopped in his tracks, scanning the ground around him repeatedly, sure that he'd missed something.

His radio popped, and Jack jumped.

"How's it coming, Mr. Careful?"

Jack took a slow breath. ". . . you are the damned craziest son of a bitch I have ever met, you know that? Who the hell _volunteers_ to do this for a livin'?"

An easy chuckle came over the radio. "Listen, you look like you're both doin' great out there."

Jack laughed in spite of himself. He was standing in a minefield, probably about to be shelled, trying to extract a fobbit and an EOD tech who was seeing double. Yep. Overwatch was _super_ boring.

Another mortar cooked off, this time on his side of the bonfire, and Jack was uneasily reminded that he'd left his rifle behind and there wasn't going to be any defending his skeet shooting trophy this go-round. Somehow he picked up his feet and kept walking.

The frequency of UXO increased the closer he got the jeep, but it was still way less than MacGyver had had to skirt on his way to that outcropping, and after not too many reroutes he found himself at the jeep's back bumper. There was a mortar about five yards away, a little banged up, but the fuze was still set stubbornly to PXT and Jack gave it a long look before he circled around and dropped down where he'd last seen the kid's head.

MacGyver was still there, and gave him a crooked grin. "You made it."

"I got your back, dude. That's how it works."

Mac just nodded, very gingerly, and Jack ducked down and located the still unmoving form of Gabel. He grabbed the soldier by his vest straps, sliding him out from under the jeep, and froze as another mortar went off, somewhere uprange.

MacGyver's assessment seemed spot on. The front of Gabel's vest showed obvious shrapnel damage, and there was some blood on the guy's exposed right flank. His pulse was rapid but not too thready, and he moaned and jerked weakly when Jack dug his thumb into the nerve cluster just under the guy's eyebrow. He was actually wearing his helmet, and it didn't look like the head gear or the guy's neck had taken any direct hits.

He wasn't in good shape, but it was still safer to move him than to leave him where he was.

"Come on, amigo, we gots to go," Jack prodded, and the blond grabbed the outer frame of the jeep and pulled himself halfway out. Jack rolled his eyes and tugged him out the rest of the way, sitting him up and spinning him like a piece of equipment so MacGyver could lean back against the jeep. He was covered in dirt, there might have been a little blood on the side of his face as well, but he batted Jack away before he could get a good look.

"I'm good. Just not sure I can carry that guy and run in a straight line."

That was fair. "Looks like you got your bell rung pretty good there. Still seein' two of me?"

Mac took a deep breath, exhaling through his mouth, and then he grabbed at the door above him, hauling himself to his feet. Once he was up, he looked reasonably steady, and Jack made short work of shouldering the mostly unconscious soldier in the same modified fireman's carry Mac had used.

"This way," Jack indicated with his chin, and against his better judgement he let Mac lead.

Seeing double or not, the tech led him rapidly away from the crackling pile of burning munitions, and the thought that they might actually have the worst behind them scampered innocently across his mind.

Then the snap and crackle moved on to pop.

He saw the light of it reflect back from the landscape, but he didn't dare turn to look, not with two hundred pounds on his shoulders and uneven footing. MacGyver, however, glanced over his shoulder and up – and up – and then back down at him with wide eyes.

There was a saying in the military; 'An ordinance technician at a dead run outranks _everybody._ '

Mac didn't have to say a thing. Jack put his head down and he sprinted for his life.

Even running flat out, the kid made two very nimble and unexpected course corrections, which Jack was barely able to follow without falling, or worse dropping the package, and something went off relatively nearby behind them. The body over his shoulders, between it and his ears, probably saved him from a hell of a bang, and then they exited the marked range about twenty yards west of where he'd left Tom and Jerry.

The shock wave blew Jack too far off balance to recover, and he landed hard on his knees, using his free arm to brace himself and prevent the injured soldier from going flying. Once he stopped their forward momentum Jack ducked his head, letting the soldier roll gently onto his back, and he sheltered the guy's face and upper body until the dirt stopped falling.

To his left, MacGyver had curled up into a surprisingly compact ball, one hand covering the back of his neck.

When it seemed safe, Jack leaned up, sitting on his heels, and he watched the EOD tech slowly untangle himself.

And then Jack started to laugh.

MacGyver sat up, glancing back uprange with the strangest expression on his face, and then he started to chuckle as well. Once they actually locked eyes they lost it completely, until they were both sitting there laughing their asses off, while Tom and Jerry stared at them, completely mystified.

Jack reached up and wiped his eyes, still laughing with relief and adrenaline. " . . . holy shit, brother."

Mac had recovered and crawled over to Gabel, taking his pulse, and when he found it, he sighed with relief, then balled up his hand into a fist and held it out.

Jack bumped it. "Nice footwork."

Mac laughed again. "And here you thought working EOD was boring." He looked up, past Jack, and Dalton turned in time to see a pair of medics scrambling along the east perimeter with a stretcher. Tom and Jerry were hovering, and Jack got to his feet, giving Tom his position by Gabel.

"Don't you touch that vest, son, until medical gets here," he warned the logistics officer, before moving off to reclaim his rifle, which he was happy to see looked unmolested.

Another set of mortars went off, this time mostly straight up in the air, and Jack watched them closely for a moment before he turned back for the trio and his tech.

Only MacGyver wasn't there.

Jack found him about twenty yards west, right about to loop the corner marker towards the west perimeter. Momentarily forgetting his radio, he cupped his free hand around his mouth. "Hey! Mac!"

The tech looked up but didn't stop. He just waved a red emergency marker over his head, then gestured dead ahead with it. "Gotta move out the perimeter!" he shouted back, and then set off at a slow jog into the darkness.

-x-

"You know, I could have driven."

Jack slowly shook his head, keeping his eyes on the road. "See, when you say shit like that, it makes me think EOD doesn't go through basic training. You do not let people with concussions operate heavy machinery, man. It don't _get_ more basic than that."

Beside him, the blond shifted a little in the seat. "Okay, first, that would be covered in first aid training, not basic combat operations. Second, according to the medic it's a mild concussion, but since it's not my first one, I can tell you that medic was just covering his ass and it's nothing more than a little inner ear inflammation caused by the sudden increase in air pressure. The cut on my temple I got from the jeep, not the explosion. Third-"

"Dude, you would argue with a fence post," Jack murmured, glancing across the darkened cabin at him. "You really would."

"Look, I just don't want you to sound stupid saying the wrong thing, so I'm providing you with the correct information-"

"So you're saying I sound stupid?"

"- so that you don't repeat misinformation to others, compounding the problem-"

"Oh, so now I'm a problem?"

"- like trying to claim improperly storing MREs at a higher than recommended temperature only affects the carotenoids in lentils, as opposed to breaking down pretty much every other chemical bond-"

"Oh my god," Jack finally said, taking his right hand off the wheel to wave it helplessly in the air, "Why the hell did I ever try to get you to talk? Is there an off switch?"

MacGyver fell quiet. For about four and a half seconds.

"You started it-"

"And I tell you what, homie, I'm gonna finish it-"

"- because you're what, an eight year old? Should I even be letting you behind the wheel?"

Jack couldn't help himself. He laughed. "Isn't that my line? Dude, you can't even grow a beard."

The kid turned to the window with a quiet laugh and a shake of his head, and a silence that wasn't as awkward as usual filled the cabin of the humvee.

But then MacGyver huffed out a breath. "Listen. This is . . . my way of saying thanks."

"Oh?" Jack pretended to give that serious consideration. "So is that like, thanks for taking out those four guys with two bullets while you were playing in the trash cans, or thanks like –"

"It's thanks for ignoring every safety protocol the Army has ever published and running into a mine field to rescue an injured soldier."

Jack let his grin fade a little, and the tech misinterpreted.

"Look, I know you don't like bombs. That can't have been easy-"

"Oh no, you're right there, champ, I seen up close and personal what an explosive will do to a body." He glanced at the kid – Mac, he reminded himself again – and gave him a nod. "Listen. Where you go, I go. That's the deal."

He could tell the tech was looking at him, but it was too damn dark to make out his expression. " . . . that's why."

Jack glanced over at him. "That's why what?"

Mac hesitated. "You asked me why I went into EOD. That's why."

He cast his mind back to the conversation. It seemed like months ago.

"My grandfather took me to the funeral of one of his WWII buddies. Guy'd saved his life. Even after all those years . . ." Mac trailed off. "Everything my grandad was able to do after that day, was because someone went into a dangerous situation, found a solution, and got him out."

"Yeah, man." He could finally see the faint glow of their base, just over the next ridge. "Yeah, I think that's why a lotta guys get into the military. But you, bud," and he shook a finger in Mac's general direction, "you're not some grunt. I think you're gonna save a lotta lives. If you don't get your skinny ass blown up before then."

MacGyver scoffed. "Hey, I'm not the one that shot a live mortar out of the sky. I thought the only thing that could do that was a Phalanx system."

"Who told you about that?" But Jack was happy let him redirect. In the span of one day, he'd found out his EOD tech had a childhood friend named Bozer, he let his friends call him Mac, and his reason for being in this shithole was pretty much the best one you could have.

"The pair of privates you left Gabel with. You made quite an impression."

It was Jack's turn to scoff. "Those fobbits didn't even know how to run a damn weapon range. I coulda shot at the moon and they'da thought I hit somethin'."

The kid – Mac – relaxed into the seat as the barbed wire of the forward operating base came into view. "So I guess I need to add skeet shooting to my mandatory tour of Texas."

"Oh yeah." He glanced at the dash for their identification. "Though I've never seen you shoot. I know a pistol's not part of your MOD, but you do know how to use one, right?"

As they reached the outer edge of the floodlights, Mac looked over at him, the picture of innocent confusion. "No, Jack. We EODs don't go through basic, remember?'

He shot Mac a dirty look, receiving a smirk in response, and he shook his head and eased the humvee up to the gate.

" . . . smartass."

FIN

-x-

As I was starting to plot the Turkey Day sequel, I realized I wanted to reference the first time Jack called MacGyver 'Mac.' So naturally, I re-watched Mac + Jack. Do you know what never happens, in any of the flashbacks to Afghanistan?

You guessed it. He calls him a lot of other things, including bud. But not Mac. I decided that might have been because Mac knew Jack was going to leave – and didn't really like the guy for the first month and a half they were working together – so they kept it to work and that was that. When Jack re-upped, and was actually friendly, I think Mac might have come around to the idea that saving Dalton's life in Paktia had changed the cynical Delta's mind about him.

Now, Pena called MacGyver 'Mac,' and so I thought maybe Mac also didn't want a repeat of that: getting close to someone only to lose them. Also, Jack made a comment in the first episode with the Ghost that when Mac was pensive, and silently playing with paperclips in the car, "I haven't seen you like this since we first met up back in the desert."

Thus this little prequel snippet was born.

There will be a couple more, including Cairo and Jack and Matty's falling out. Technically, **Golden Compass** could be considered happening in the same little universe, but I have no plans to directly reference it.


	2. Citrus Punch

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

-x-

Smoke.

MacGyver looked up from the desk. He still couldn't figure out how the vacuum pump was supposed to fit to the grinding assembly, and every time he added the syrup the whole thing fell apart. He felt like he'd been at it for hours, and no matter how much it made sense in his head, when he tried to fit the pieces together they moved around. The o-ring wasn't on the grind motor anymore, he needed to stick it back with the syrup-

But why did it smell like smoke?

Mac leaned away from the desk, dimly aware of discomfort. His throat was dry and sore, when he swallowed it stuck to itself and made him choke.

He coughed, sharply, and then he realized that he was asleep.

Mac coughed again, more deeply this time, and pain in his head and his throat tugged him closer to consciousness. He was on his side, lying on something hard, and little sharp bits scraped his cheek and jaw. He coughed so hard he gagged, and a thin spike of adrenaline did little to clear the cobwebs.

It was dark, and he squeezed his stinging eyes shut, bringing up a shaking hand to rub them as he rolled onto his back. The smoke tasted acrid, more wood than electrical. He didn't hear anything besides a muted rumble. Now that he was on his back, there seemed to be light, to his left, and he squinted open watering eyes, unable to make out much besides movement and a warm yellow color.

 _That_ got him up.

Or rather, it didn't. Mac lay on his back, trying to catch his breath, and he picked up his head only enough to look around himself. He was lying on a concrete floor, in what looked like the aisle of a storage warehouse. Industrial shelving units were on both sides of him, stuffed with boxes of records in their tidy columns.

Behind the one on his left, he could see the fire. It had already climbed the shelving unit to the ceiling.

He tilted his head up, to find the wall, and his gut clenched when the floor wobbled. Pain radiated from the back of his head into his teeth and down his spine. Mac rolled onto his side again, bringing a hand to the base of his skull. It came away sticky. He looked at the blood a moment, dark on his fingertips, like –

Oil. Motor oil. And black leather driving gloves.

It clicked into place, and he gasped, then choked again and rolled into a low crouch, coughing. Desmond. He'd been disabling the cars by ripping out the fuel lines, rolling under vehicle after vehicle to avoid being spotted on the garage cameras. Most of Desmond's fleet was old school, he was a classic GTO fan and Jack had been over the moon that they finally got to play Grand Theft Auto with muscle cars.

He'd sent Jack ahead to the pier to intercept the buyer. He was supposed to have hotwired the last car and escaped the garage, leaving the majority of Desmond's gang unable to follow.

Clearly something had gone wrong, and that something had clobbered him on the back of the head.

Mac still had his jacket on, but after clumsily patting himself down he confirmed his phone, his swiss army knife, and his wallet were gone. They hadn't been using coms, just in case one of Desmond's guys spotted it when he came in for his 'audition' as a getaway driver. Nikki had no way to track him.

He glanced around again, trying to get his bearings. Wherever he was, it wasn't the garage, and it was much smaller than the warehouse they suspected contained his illegal arms. There were floor to ceiling shelving units, all apparently loaded with bankers boxes. Manilla folders and papers were visible through the handles. He could feel the heat of the fire and his throat was already sore from the hot, dry smoke and fumes. This place was going to go up fast.

On the cinderblock wall in front of him there was a red glass box, and he crawled towards it until the fire flared up and the light showed him that it was empty, containing neither a fire axe nor an extinguisher. He pulled himself into a low crouch, pressing a hand to his skull at a painful throb, and kept as low to the ground as he could, hurrying to the end of the aisle.

There were five rows of shelves. Two were partially engulfed.

Mac put his back to the fire, scanning the far wall. There were a series of doors, he could barely make them out in the thickening haze, and he moved as fast as he dared, using the wall to help guide him. The first door opened into a dark, mostly empty room with a tile floor – a bathroom. The second was an office, no window. The third –

Some kind of break room, and bright white light bleeding in under the far door. An exit.

Mac pushed into the room, sucking in somewhat cleaner air gratefully, and he straightened a little as he crossed the tiny kitchenette, getting a hand on the push bar and shoving.

The door didn't budge. It was pretty dark, but there was still enough light to see that the mechanism wasn't at fault.

It had likely been barricaded from the outside.

Mac banged on it for all he was worth, but there was no sound from the other side, and the door never budged. The hinges were on the outside, and even if they weren't, he didn't have his swiss army knife. Mac threw his back against it in frustration, his eyes drawn to the vent above the other door, where smoke from the main storage room was filtering in.

Above that was a drop ceiling, and greying acoustic tiles. His knowledge of Venezuelan building code was spotty at best, but with his luck, there was probably no fire wall between the two rooms.

Mac gave the break room a once-over, then started tearing it apart. Under the sink he found a bottle of liquid drain cleaner, but as soon as he picked it up he realized it was almost empty. The Soft Scrub beside it was not useful, but the dish detergent could be . . .

The upper cabinets yielded a box of baking soda and some packets of salt. There was an ancient microwave on the counter, the magnetron might help, but there was no power, and he couldn't generate enough with salt, baking soda, and dish soap to do any good.

There was no fire extinguisher.

The mini-fridge held only a single serving carton of citrus punch and half a box of dead pizza. There was no foil in sight. But it was still cool; they'd cut the power recently, or the fire had already knocked it out. It still had refrigerant in it – not in enough quantity to be useful - and copper tubing.

Mac grabbed the paper carton of juice, ripping it open and sniffing it. It didn't smell terribly acidic, and he took a sip. It was sweetened and mostly water – not enough citric acid to activate the baking soda. He drank another gulp, just to get some moisture in his throat, and then he set it down and turned the spigot on the faucet.

There was a weak trickle of water. The main had been shut off.

There was no way he was getting through that door with a cup of refrigerant and nothing else. Even if he had a way to heat it under pressure to the point it ignited, there wasn't enough of it to cut through the door.

There had to be another exit.

Mac grabbed the dishtowel, which had been slung over the faucet, and he used what little water he could coax from the tap to wet it. He tied it around his face, ducking back down, and then he opened the door leading back to the storage room.

Conditions had deteriorated just as fast as he'd predicted. The third and fourth shelving units had caught, and the first one was now completely engulfed, the entire length of the two-story room. Drifting embers of paper were being tossed around in updrafts, and the fire would spread quickly to the rest of the shelves.

There was too much smoke to see much of anything besides flames, and Mac held his breath and eased along the wall until he found the corner. The next wall was the furthest from the fire, and halfway down he finally found the emergency exit.

It was similarly barricaded.

Well, now he knew why they hadn't bothered to tie him up. They probably thought the knock to the head would keep him out until the smoke or the heat finished him off, and without any windows or exits, they were right.

Unless he found a way out, fast, that was exactly what was going to happen.

Mac followed the wall to the next, hoping that he'd find another exit, but he couldn't get more than thirty feet down the wall before the heat started to get too intense. They'd used some kind of accelerant when they'd set the first shelf on fire, it was burning hotter than the rest, and when Mac heard the telltale screech of fatigued metal he backed off, choking his way back towards the break room.

There was too much smoke for him to tell if his fire wall theory held, and Mac went to the only other room with some hope of having ventilation – the bathroom. The door had been opened, so the room was filling with smoke, and Mac used the light of the blaze behind him to get the lay of the land.

There. Above the toilet, there was a vent. The bathroom was single use, and cinderblocks as far up the walls as he could make out.

Mac closed the door, pitching the room into total darkness. No light was coming out of that vent. Not a good sign. It wasn't a large room, and even in the inky blackness he located and stood on the toilet seat, groping around until he found the vent cover. It was screwed on, and he went at it with his thumbnail for a few seconds before he gave up and ripped off his jacket. The zipper pull worked well enough as an impromptu flathead screwdriver, and he got the cover off and discarded it. He reached into the vent, hoping beyond hope he was going to find a pull, or maybe the exterior had gotten covered over with a bird's nest –

But instead he found a hard metal box. It was an electric fan, and the vent didn't go through the wall. It went up the ceiling.

Without power, there was no way he was going to get it to work. Without tools, he couldn't even get it out of the vent column.

Mac dropped back down to the tile, sucking down air that was growing more toxic by the second. Very few people actually died of being burned alive in indoor fires. The vast majority of deaths were caused by smoke inhalation. The heated gases in smoke included wonderful by-products like cyanide and carbon monoxide, which caused pulmonary complications that quickly resulted in respiratory failure and death.

If he didn't find some way to isolate or filter the air, he was going to die long before that fire ever breached the room.

It was a well known fact, supported by multiple main-stream films, that there is unlimited breathable air just on the other side of a toilet u-bend. The theory went, if you stuck a flexible pipe far enough through the toilet drain, you would eventually hit the vent pipe – attached to the sewer pipe - that allows fresh air to enter the piping when a toilet is flushed.

And in theory, that was great. Except that pipe is actually also filled with sewer gas, which is just as toxic as the gases released during the combustion of common building materials. If the electric fan wasn't screwed firmly in the way of the ceiling vent, he could have built a snorkel with the copper tubing from the mini-fridge, but there was no way he could get that tubing past the fan grill.

Mac closed his eyes and pictured the bathroom again. Tankless industrial toilet, sink. Metal box for paper towels. Plastic trash can in the corner. Vent over the toilet. Mirror over the sink.

He stood, keep his head as low as possible as he groped for the sink, then the mirror. It wasn't a medicine cabinet, it was just a mirror, and it had apparently been glued to the wall because it didn't budge.

All he had was the towel over his face and the paper towels in the dispenser. He turned the faucet on the sink, getting even less water than in the kitchenette, and he turned it off quickly, grabbing a towelette and stuffing it into the sink drain. No point in wasting what little he had.

He could wet the paper towels in the sink or the toilet, stuff them into the cracks around the door, but the fire would dry them out almost immediately. He needed something that would retain moisture longer –

The records.

Bankers boxes were pretty thick, he could wet them down, stack them along the door, and preserve what little air was in the bathroom.

Mac rewet the towel around his face from the sink, using apparently the last of the water pressure, and then he braced himself, took a few deep breaths as close to the floor as he could, and slipped out the bathroom door, shutting it instantly behind him.

The fire had made it almost to his side of the room via the second and third shelves, and he used his jacket as a heat shield, grabbing the first boxes he could get his hands on and dragging them back to the bathroom as quickly as he could. Once he had them all gathered, he opened the door, shoving everything in at once, and tripping over the boxes to get the door shut again.

Mac choked and coughed his way through rearranging the boxes, using the water from the toilet bowl and the u-bend from the sink trap to wet down the files inside, and he was a little comforted that even if he died, if the warehouse burned quickly enough, these boxes – and any evidence they held of Desmond's operation, which he was clearly trying to dispose of – would likely survive the fire and the minor water damage he was causing.

His chest and throat were burning by the time he'd completed the stack, keeping damp cardboard against the edges of the door top to bottom, and then there was nothing else to do. Mac stripped off his jacket, curled up against the far wall, put his back to the door, and covered his head and upper torso with the jacket. He still had the damp towel over his face as a crude particulate filter and to try to humidify the air, but every breath seared through his scorched airways anyway.

Idly he wished he'd finished off that citrus punch.

Jack and Nikki were never going to find him.

He wasn't sure what made the thought pop into his head. When he didn't show at the pier, Jack would know something had gone wrong. He'd ask Nikki to ping his phone, which Mac didn't have, and he'd head back to the garage. Assuming Desmond's boys had found alternative transportation – they must have, to have moved him to wherever he was – Jack wouldn't find the gang there, so there would be no one to interrogate. The only other property of Eugene Desmond's that Nikki had identified was the shipping warehouse, and Mac was very sure this was not it.

This legitimately looked like off-site records storage. And the way his head felt, he could have been out for hours. He had no idea where he was.

And that meant Jack had no idea where he was. Nikki had no idea where he was. Unless Jack could get his hands on Desmond and beat it out of him, or Nikki had somehow gotten eyes on him when they took him to wherever he was now, neither one of them was going to make it to him in time.

But maybe Nikki _had_ gotten eyes on him. Maybe he'd been on camera when they'd pulled him out from under the car, or stuffed him in another one. Maybe she'd tracked the vehicle, even though she'd said the camera coverage in Maracaibo was awful. Maybe she'd called Jack, told him what had happened.

Mac would have rolled his eyes if they hadn't already been closed. Even if Jack was standing outside the building right that very second, it was over. No one could walk into that storage room right now, it was an inferno. He could feel the heat radiating through the cinderblock wall from across the room. The water main had probably been cut off to slow down the firefighters and emergency services, to make sure all the records burned.

Even if Nikki knew exactly where he was – and it was a big if - Jack was not going to get him out of this.

He wasn't going to get out of this.

Mac sighed softly, swallowing down another cough and well aware he was dripping with sweat. He didn't even have a pen. Or enough water to make some ink. Couldn't even leave them a note.

What the hell would he write, even if he did?

_Hey you two. Sorry I got caught. You were right, Jack; splitting up was a bad idea. This wasn't your fault, either of you. Hope this evidence helps. Keep an eye on Boze for me. - Mac_

He tried to imagine Jack's expression, reading a note like that. And Nikki would –

Mac choked hard enough to make himself gag, and he shifted himself into recovery position as slowly developing nausea made itself known. The air under his jacket was stifling, but given the way his back and legs felt, the rest of the room was just as hot. In a little while, he'd move on to the next stage of heatstroke, and stop sweating altogether.

Of course, by then he'd probably be unconscious. If not for the searing burn in his throat and his lungs, the ache in his head would have lulled him to sleep already.

He hadn't said the 'L' word yet.

He hadn't actually said it out loud. Love. Not even to himself. But that's what it was, he was pretty sure. Like with Frankie, but different. Nikki was very, very good at what she did, but he was her equal. Their skill sets complimented one another.

Their bodies complimented one another, whenever he was in close quarters with her. In Vienna, the cyberweapon mission, waltzing with her in Schönbrunn Palace. Working on her self defense skills in the gym. Sitting beside her on the picnic bench outside DXS. He'd only kissed her the once, but . . .

They just fit together.

That's what people said in situations like this.

_I love you._

She knew. She had to know.

. . . didn't she?

Panic gripped him then, and he coughed weakly, the taste of citrus punch in his mouth. He had to tell her. He had to tell them both, tell Jack –

He had to –

He -

Ice on his skin. On his chest. It was so hot it felt like freezing. Shards of ice stabbed into his lungs. He whimpered and tried to pull away. Tried to go to sleep. God, just let him fall asleep. It hurt, he hurt –

The pain shrieked at him, digging in, and it terrified him. It was swooping closer and closer.

When it ended suddenly in a shattering silence, he couldn't help an involuntary flinch. There was something in his throat. It didn't belong. Discomfort was quickly blossoming into pain, and he tried clumsily to grab it. His hands were all tangled up, he –

Something touched him. It didn't hurt. It was soothing. Comforting. He focused on it, trying to distance himself from the pain, and it repeated, over and over again. His head, someone was stroking his head. He felt himself relax, and the pain slowly ebbed.

And then the hand went away.

Confused, MacGyver opened his eyes.

A row of cabinets and a popcorn ceiling appeared. Somewhere to his right there was a rhythmic, quiet beep. He didn't feel much pain, but his left arm was pins and needles.

Mac turned his head a little, taking in the hospital bed, and the blonde hair that was completely blocking his view of his arm. She was curled up in a chair beside the bed, her upper body folded over the mattress, and judging by the fact that she wasn't moving, he was going to wager that Nikki was asleep.

Behind her were two wide windows. He couldn't see any buildings or trees, but the color of the sky indicated that it was just after sunrise.

There was a soft click, and Mac turned to his right, where the door had just opened, and an all too familiar silhouette filled the frame.

Jack froze for a second, then came the rest of the way in, closing the door quietly behind him. "Hey man."

Mac blinked at him, then swallowed, somehow surprised when it didn't really hurt. "Hey," he rasped, and suddenly there was a cup of water with a straw at his mouth. He drank slowly, still surprised at the lack of pain, and then shoved the straw out of his mouth with his tongue. "Thanks."

Nikki didn't stir, and Jack took the seat on his right, setting his coffee aside. "How you feelin'?"

And for the life of him, Mac couldn't figure out what the hell was going on.

". . . how . . ?"

"How you feelin'," Jack repeated. "I mean, you damn near got your goose cooked, kid."

That was not what he'd meant, and Mac took a slightly deeper breath.

That was a mistake.

By the time he'd finished coughing, he'd figured out where the pain had been hiding - in his chest. There was no reason to be quiet anymore because Nikki was wide awake, fingers intertwined with his, and Jack's firm hand was chafing his back.

"Easy, kid. Just take it easy."

He swallowed some smoke-flavored mucous, taking a few experimental breaths before he felt it was safe to lean back, and Jack helped him ease against the pillows. "There ya go."

But Mac shook his head. "How . . . how did you find me?" His voice was even more raspy than before.

Jack jerked his chin across the bed. "You really think sister here'd take her eyes off you when you were all covered in oil and grease?" He leaned in conspiratorially. "I think she digs the look, man."

Nikki made a sound of agreement, stroking his fingers. "I saw them stuff you into a trunk. Almost lost you in the canopy. Picked you up again at a storage facility by the construction site. As soon as I saw the smoke –" She broke off, and squeezed his hand a little.

Mac squeezed back.

She gave him a shy smile that turned quickly into her usual teasing expression. "I figured, if you could, you'd hole up in one of the side rooms."

"And I got to use a wrecking ball." Jack puffed up a little. "Little harder than I thought it'd be, took me a couple tries but I got the job done."

Mac tried to picture that in his head, and then glanced down at himself, confirming he still had legs. It was hard to see under the blankets, but there were two lumps at the end of the bed that twitched on command.

Jack punched him lightly on the shoulder. "Knocked down the adjoining wall, smartass. So the fire brigade could get you out. They did a number on those evidence boxes, but we salvaged enough."

"Good thing too, since Jack had to abandon the sale to get to you," Nikki added. "Records is still scanning them in, but it looks like you grabbed invoices for the entire east coast operation."

"Which means we'll get that son of a bitch the next time he tries to use any of those accounts," Jack finished. "He and I are gonna have a little chat about his HR department."

"Yeah, he did take firing me pretty literally," Mac grated. "We still in Venezuela?"

"Caracas," Nikki answered. "They wanted you off the ventilator before we flew home."

He had vague memories of the tube in his throat, someone stroking his hair-

Nikki ran her thumb lightly over his, and he tightened his grip, just a little.

"Come on, man, what's that look for?" Jack leaned back in his chair. "You didn't really think I'd let you die in a literal shithole in Venezuela, didja?"

Jack propped his feet up on the mattress, rescuing his coffee, and Nikki gave him that shy smile again, and Mac relaxed back into the pillows.

"Never even crossed my mind."

-x-

In more prep for the Turkey Day sequel, this snippet was needed to fill in a gap MacGyver mentioned to Bozer when they were disavowed in Amsterdam, when he says "On my worst days, I've nearly died alone. On my best days, I've saved hundreds of lives and no one even knew I was there. It's just the job."

The only time in my recollection we saw him nearly die alone (which I interpreted to mean without an ally at his side, as opposed to literally by himself) was with El Noche, and I needed another example. I suppose you could argue when Murdoc kidnapped him he nearly died, but let's be real, Murdoc would have kept him around for days. At any rate, I needed more than the El Noche reference.

I'm sure you can't guess why.

(And apologies if I messed up the details related to smoke inhalation, chemistry, or plumbing, but the sewer gas in the toilet vent pipe really is a thing.)


	3. Baba Ganoush

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

 **Content Warnings** : Some coarse language, non-explicit sexual situations, and somewhat graphic violence.

-M-

**DAY ONE**

He was quite certain, now; Nikki was definitely a target.

She was flipping through a book of excursions that had been delivered with their drinks, ostensibly picking out what they were going to be doing during their three day stay at the resort in Sharm El-Sheikh. In reality, she was checking it for a message from the seller.

But unless he was mistaken, that message was actually headed their way now, wearing clothing with a substantially smaller threadcount than the Egyptian cotton tablecloth, and covered in gold coins.

"Ooh, honey, look at this." She was cooing over a full-sized insert of a sunken wreck, covered in barnacles and small sea life. "The SS Thistlegorm was rediscovered by Jacques Cousteau in 1956. It says here it's supposed to be one of the most sought after wreck dives in the world."

MacGyver leaned in to study the image – it _was_ a nice photograph, and he would gladly pay money out of his own pocket to dive that wreck - and slipped a hand onto her thigh. She nudged him back playfully.

"Come on, babe, be serious. What do you think? Do we have time for a day dive?"

He returned her smile with one of his own, leaning even closer to put his mouth near her ear. "One of the locals would like a word." He gave her a quick peck on the cheek as the bellydancer arrived at their table and announced herself with the bell-like tones of her finger cymbals.

"Come, come!" she gestured, her arms bending sinuously in the graceful movements recognizable the world over as belonging to Egyptian bellydance. "Come dance!"

Nikki turned away from him and giggled softly, shaking her head shyly no, but the dancer was undeterred, taking her hands gently by the wrist and pulling her away from the table. Out among the diners and guests, there were other bellydancers, all wearing different colors, picking out all kinds. A ten year old boy on vacation with his family. A frat guy Mac wasn't completely sure was straight. An old Egyptian woman with leathered skin and a knowing eye. A beautiful young woman, clearly on her honeymoon.

Just as Nikki was supposed to be. Only she wasn't Nikki Carpenter. She was Rebecca Thompson, just married to the rather unremarkably named Samuel Thompson. Only his name was unremarkable; his father owned one-eighth of a platinum mine in South Africa, and he used the money to ensure a steady stream of weapons, narcotics, and mercenaries kept the region just unstable enough that the blatant exploitation of the mine flew under the overwhelmed government's radar, but trade and shipping routes were still intact.

It wasn't the first time Mac had gone undercover as a gun runner's son, and as an added bonus it allowed Jack Dalton to sit right beside him and not even try to pretend he was anything other than the muscle. Jack liked any cover where he didn't have to be hypervigilant about hiding any weapons he happened to have on his person, and no one at this particular resort had batted an eyelash.

Given the amount of firepower he'd seen concealed under light linen shirts and tucked into cargo shorts, Mac was beginning to think Jack was going to draw attention for being _under_ armed.

MacGyver chuckled as Nikki shot him what was probably an authentic embarrassed look and was half dragged, half cajoled towards the raised platform that was acting as the evening's stage. Across from him, Jack Dalton took a sip of his club soda and lime, eyes on the bar mirror, keeping tabs on everything going on behind him.

"Yeah, I bet you could make time for a day dive. Night dive might be more fun though."

Mac very carefully didn't respond to the suggestion in Jack's tone, and kept his voice soft. "Well, we will have some time to kill tomorrow, if the intel Thornton gave us is correct."

The former Delta operator cast a glance up at the platform, where the guests were being lined up to begin their bellydance 'lesson.'

"You just wanna see her in a bikini."

Mac eyed his friend. "Jack, there is nothing sexy about scuba diving. That water is about twenty five degrees Celsius. That's wetsuit temperature."

Jack didn't take his eyes off the stage, though Mac knew he wasn't really looking at it. Or rather, he wasn't looking at Nikki – he was watching for anyone trying to pass her the meet information. "May not be sexy for _you_ , dude, but there's nothin' wrong with a neoprene catsuit."

He didn't really want to think about cold water at the moment. Or catsuits. Or –

"Yeah, plus the snot-filled mask, that's always attractive, and a nice-sized chunk of silicone between your teeth -"

Jack almost choked on his club soda. "Geez, dude, I do _not_ need to hear about whatever you two are doin' with hunks of silicone."

Mac sharpened his look, but Jack chose to continue watching the crowd, wearing an insufferable little grin. When the music started up, Mac allowed his warning glare to drop, turning back to the stage.

The bellydancers led their students through the basics of a hip shimmy, in slow motion. The Egyptian grandmother and the ten year old boy were the clear winners – everyone else was a little too self-conscious. As the crowd tittered, the professional dancers came forward, eyeing their apprentices up and down before they darted in to make wardrobe corrections. Nikki was in a light-colored linen skirt that came midway up her shins and a white cotton blouse, and her dancer slowly shimmied her way into a half-crouch – much to the appreciation of the audience – and began to roll the hem of Nikki's blouse upwards using the same wrist moves she would in her dance.

Of course, the rest of the guests were getting the same treatment, but Mac didn't really pay them any attention. Nikki's bared midriff was a golden tan against the light fabric, her bellybutton piercing now visible, and the dancer expertly tied the blouse hem in a knot just below Nikki's bust, fixing the new, shorter length in place. Even at this distance, he could see the blush creeping up her cheeks, and Nikki flashed him a sheepish smile.

"Close that trap, bud, something's liable to fly in there," a low voice teased in his ear, and Mac didn't even bother to look at him.

"We're newlyweds. Some of us take our covers seriously, Jack-"

"Yeah, and hop right under 'em. You been seeing each other now, what, 'bout two weeks?"

Mac turned to stare at Jack, a little startled. "How-" Too late he caught himself, closing his mouth before it could incriminate him further, but he could see from his partner's satisfied smirk that the damage was already done.

He huffed out a sigh. "Fine. Maybe."

Definitely. Unquestionably.

A little worried about coloring that might be appearing on his _own_ face, Mac shifted in his seat and picked up his beer. "What gave us away?"

The bellydance lesson started up again, and Jack went back to watching the bar mirror, tracking one of the waiters. "Be easier to tell ya what didn't."

Great. "Does Thornton know?"

It wasn't exactly highlighted in bold in the employee handbook, but generally speaking, fraternization in the workplace was frowned upon. There were plenty of very good reasons an intelligence organization would have to discourage it - ensuring compartmentalized and top secret data actually stayed that way, for one. In their case, though, most everything Mac knew, Nikki knew too.

"Dude." Jack's tone was almost pitying. "Probably before _you_ did. Trust me, if Patty disapproved, you'd know."

The hip shimmies were tested again. Mac was now almost certain about the frat guy. Most men didn't have that fluid movement to their hips. He also hadn't seen anyone pass Nikki anything, unless the dancer had managed to roll it into her now-cropped shirt.

"And what about you?"

Thornton being tolerant was welcome news, but not terribly unexpected. She'd gone to great lengths to recruit him, and they had what Mac considered a very good working relationship. She hadn't indicated anything, one way or the other, when she'd given them this mission, and as long as the relationship didn't interfere with their work, he didn't think that would change.

But Jack . . . it had just been the two of them for a while now. First Afghanistan, then DXS. He'd welcomed their new field tech with open arms, called her sister. Mac knew Jack wouldn't hesitate to walk into a bullet for her. But relationships could get complicated pretty quickly. As some of Bozer's friends were so fond of saying, 'bros before hoes.' The language was a little coarse, but he understood the sentiment.

Feeling like you were getting displaced by someone else was never a pleasant experience. And Mac had no intention of letting any relationship with Nikki – whether it became anything more or fizzled out – change the dynamics between them.

Jack Dalton was his partner. And way more. Probably more than he knew. Always would be. Mac just . . . wasn't quite sure how to tell the other man that.

But maybe Jack could see it on his face, because he gave an easy chuckle. "Bud, you don't need my permission. I ain't your dad. Besides, she's crazy about you. Has been from the start. Long as you two can concentrate on the missions, and don't get my happy ass killed in some third-world hole in the ground, then good on ya both, bro."

He picked up his club soda, offering it across the table, and Mac bonked it gently with his beer bottle. They both took a sip.

"That being said, the surveillance van? I mean really?" His partner shook his head, though his eyes were still amused. "Some of us keep our lunches in there, man."

Mac fought the urge to curl up and die of embarrassment. Instead, he cleared his throat and took another sip of beer. His eyes were drawn back to the stage, where arm movements had started to be added to the shimmies, and that did nothing to help steer his thoughts back into the clear.

"And what if I had needed a little backup, huh? Wasn't like you two were payin' any attention."

Mac cleared his throat again, chuckling at his own discomfort. Sometimes he really did feel like the boy scout everyone thought he was. "It was a dead drop, Jack. And it's not like we were . . . distracted . . . that long."

The club soda was very deliberately placed on the table. "Well, I ain't your pop, but it occurs to me maybe no one ever had that conversation with you," Jack drawled, and Mac glanced at him, a little alarmed. The teasing expression was gone, replaced by deadly seriousness.

"You expect her to stick around, you gotta make sure she gets her happies too. You with me?"

Mac just stared at Jack, momentarily speechless, and he had _never_ been happier to be interrupted by a waiter in his life.

Jack simply leaned back in his seat, adjusting his position to put a sidearm in easy reach, and Mac glanced up at the man. Same guy who had brought them the first round. He had three champagne flutes on his tray, which he set down without asking, as well as an ornate platter containing three cigars and a book of matches.

"Our best wishes for your recent nuptials," the waiter murmured, in accented English, and then he gave them a quick head bow and withdrew.

Jack's eyes were back to the mirror, but Mac had a clear view of the rest of the patio seating, and he could see that a few other tables were receiving similar treatment.

Curiously, Mac picked up one of the elegantly wrapped cigars, taking a cautious whiff. Tobacco and cognac, delicately spiced. Expensive. But not otherwise marked with anything, like GPS coordinates or an address.

Jack scooped up the matchbook, sliding the box of matches from its sleeve. The cover bore only the resort's logo, but the bottom of the box contained handwritten numbers.

"Got a location. Sale goes down tomorrow, 1900 local time."

Mac nodded, giving the cigar another appreciative sniff before passing it to Jack. "Think this is more your poison."

Jack inspected the cigar, and his eyebrows rose. "Nicaraguan, the wrapper at least. Yeah, this and a glass of scotch'd do the trick."

They both glanced back up at the stage as the lesson closed, clapping politely for the dancers and their apprentices before the resort guests were released back into the crowd. Nikki was slightly out of breath as she made it back to the table, and Mac stood quickly and pulled out her chair. She flashed him a grateful smile, and then took in the platter of cigars and champagne.

Mac noticed that she hadn't adjusted her blouse.

"Oh, are we having a party?"

Mac retook his own seat, since bailing right after receiving the message would be far too obvious, and offered her a champagne flute instead. He had no doubt the cigars and the sparkling wine were perfectly safe; no one was going to poison the buyers they'd gone to all this trouble to attract.

Particularly not since all of those people were very dangerous, considering they were here to bid on a dirty bomb.

"The party's tomorrow night," Mac informed her, tapping his own flute gently to hers, and Jack stuck with his club soda. The coordinates would tell them which of Zoheir's properties likely held the bomb. They'd scope it out later tonight, disable the bomb and plant a tracking device, just in case, then wait for the auction to get photos of everyone in attendance, and arrest the seller and buyer.

Which sounded deceptively easy. The total lack of coms for the duration of the mission, and the lack of any kind of backup made it just a _hair_ more dicey. The sale was going down on the anniversary of the Arab Spring, and tensions were high, with many young Egyptians planning nationwide demonstrations. The Egyptian police and intelligence agencies were looking for anything out of the ordinary, including encrypted radio and wireless communications, and any Western agents caught on the ground would have a _very_ bad day.

So outside of one little mistake putting them in an Egyptian prison for the rest of their likely unnaturally abbreviated lives, it was a pretty straightforward mission.

Nikki nudged Mac under the table with a sandaled foot, bringing him out of his thoughts. "Why is Jack looking at us like that?"

Jack touched his chest in a 'who, me' gesture, the very picture of offended innocence, and Mac rolled his eyes and set his champagne flute back on the table. "He knows," Mac said simply.

Nikki surprised him by practically melting into her chair in relief. "Oh thank god," she muttered, and then downed the rest of the champagne.

He didn't really know what to say, and she set the flute firmly on the table and took a cleansing breath. "So now we can finally get back to work, instead of being all awkward and weird?"

Jack grinned at her. "I dunno, you gonna abandon this life for a career in bellydancin'?"

She snorted. Loudly. "Considering you boys were looking literally everywhere but at me, I think I'll stick with technology." She held out an elegant hand. "The address, please?"

Jack raised his eyebrow but passed Mac the matchbook, and he handed it to her. Her fingers lingered on his for just a second longer than was absolutely necessary, letting him know she wasn't really that upset about his wandering attention – not that it had ever wandered far – and she scanned the coordinates.

"Local. That's convenient," she murmured, and Jack's other eyebrow lifted.

"You memorized our GPS coordinates?"

Nikki gave him a strange look. "Didn't you?" Then she turned back to Mac, her sultry blue eyes making absolutely zero effort to disguise her thoughts. "You ready to turn in, sweetie?"

Mac thought he did a very good job of recovering, turning to signal the bartender. The man gave him a nod, letting him know it would all be charged to the room, and Mac stood to get Nikki's chair. "We do have a _very_ early morning ahead of us."

He scooted her seat back, not missing the look Jack and Nikki exchanged. "So much for not being awkward," she murmured across the table, and Mac gave her a half-hearted reproachful look as she took his arm. Jack, for his part, just chuckled, and the trio, with Mac and Nikki in the lead, made their way across the patio back towards the resort. Mac saw that they weren't the first to leave; a cigar and two flutes of champagne, untouched, were still sitting at the table where the old Egyptian woman had been. Mac cast his mind back to the gentleman that had been with her. He had been younger, perhaps a son.

Nikki was already in the resort's network, they could pull up the footage and make sure they identified all the prospective buyers – at least the ones that had been here. Sharm El-Sheikh had its own airport, as well as its own ports, making it an extremely convenient meeting place and giving the buyer multiple ways to ship their prize. He expected they'd have a few surprise arrivals when they attended the actual auction.

The honeymoon suites were all on the first floor, which Mac assumed was to facilitate drunken stumbling, and Mr. and Mrs. Thompson's bodyguard was across the hall. Mac was not surprised to see Jack had kept the cigar, and he stopped at his door with a wink.

"You kids have fun."

"We will," Nikki assured him, as Mac withdrew the key card from his wallet. The lock clicked open, and he held the door for her, waiting patiently for Jack to spit out whatever it was that was so clearly on his mind.

He'd keyed open his door as well, and his expression was earnest. "Don't forget that thing we talked about earlier."

Mac opened his mouth, then shook his head with a smirk. "That's not been a problem," he replied, and shut the door firmly behind him. Then he leaned against it and closed his eyes for a moment, letting his head fall back with a sigh.

"That was not the way I saw that going."

"What, coming clean to Papa Jack?" Nikki was bent over her keyboard, checking the coordinates, and Mac just watched her, taking in every line and curve. The honeymoon suite was quite large, with a parlor for entertaining guests, and the bedroom off to the right. Housekeeping had come in while they'd been at dinner to turn on a few lights, and the bulbs were all a soft yellow. Standing there in that elegant room, in nothing more than a flowing linen skirt and white blouse, he was stunned by how beautiful she was.

She seemed unaware of his study, idly tucking her blonde hair back over her shoulder. "He's a pro, Mac. What did you expect?"

He took a measured breath. "I don't know," he finally admitted. "This could change the team dynamic, throw us off."

Nikki cocked an eyebrow at him, and since she'd just caught him staring, he saw no reason to stop. She gave him a slow smile, then leaned up, making her way back across the room as gracefully as any dancer. She stopped with barely any space between them, her nose almost touching his, and her eyes were deep and dark. He felt her hands settle lightly on his chest. "Do you really want to talk about Jack right now?"

He grinned, still leaning against the door. "Actually, I was wondering if you could show me that move you just learned."

"Mmm?" Nikki ran her fingertips down to his arms, then his wrists, then his hands, claiming them and placing them on her bare waist. Her skin was warm and supple beneath his fingers. "Which one? Oh wait . . . this one?"

She shifted her hips to the right, then left, the fabric of her skirt just brushing the front of his trousers, and Mac pulled her closer. She drew up her arms, mimicking the bellydancer almost flawlessly, and he let his fingertips trail up her sides, drawing the blouse up with them. Once it was off, she let her arms fall gently to drape around his shoulders, running a hand through his hair. Her nails lightly grazed the back of his neck.

Mac pulled her closer still and kissed her, deeply, tasting champagne. He didn't let her go until they were both breathless.

". . . could you do that again?"

-M-

It was around noon the following day before they trudged back into the room – the three of them, this time - and all found seats. Mac and Jack ended up taking both ends of the sofa, and Nikki slouched at the desk, plugging her laptop back into its power supply to charge. She pulled a small device from her pocketbook, aiming it systematically around the room, but it never emitted so much as a beep, and she gave the boys a weary nod.

The room was clear of listening devices.

Mac finally voiced what they were all thinking. "Well that was a bust."

The meet coordinates were a bar. It was pretty clear what that meant; they would be provided transportation to the actual site for the auction. Which meant the site had to be local, just like the bar. The problem was, they had checked all Zoheir's properties and ships in Sharm El-Sheikh, and there wasn't a trace of a dirty bomb in any of them.

Endangered species, priceless artifacts, recreational drugs, illegal but non-nuclear weapons, and probable human trafficking, they'd found. More than enough to put Zoheir away for life. But without having that bomb in hand . . .

Jack had his head thrown back, pillowed on the ample cushions on the back of the couch, and his eyes were closed. "You wanna tell her?"

Tell Director Thornton that they hadn't found the bomb, meaning they hadn't disabled it, _or_ put a tracking device on it. They were going to attend an auction where a live, fully functional dirty bomb was going to be sold to the highest bidder, and unless that was them – which was not part of the plan, nor part of the op's budget – they would have no choice but to follow the buyer or track the seller's communications to get a location on the bomb.

Not impossible. But certainly not optimal.

"Not really," Mac admitted. "Hey Director Thornton, we're going to have to stay in country an extra day, spy on the communications network you told us not to touch with a ten foot pole, and can we have an account with thirty million US, just in case?"

"I think you should lead with the thirty mil," Nikki suggested from the computer. "That should get her blood pressure high enough that she doesn't hear the rest."

Mac mirrored Jack's position, rubbing his grainy eyes. "Alright, if the bomb's not here, where's the next best place?"

"The moon."

Mac was tempted to whack Jack in the shoulder, but it was just too much effort. "Places on Earth, Jack, preferably somewhere within the realm of possibility."

"Hey, the moon's possible –"

Nikki didn't bother to let him finish. "Zoheir's got properties all over the Middle East. Cairo, Alexandria, El Qasr, Luxor . . . then there's Al Qurayyat in Jordan, Damascus and Beirut in Lebanon, Jeddah and Medina in Saudi Arabia, Al Hudaydah in Yemen –"

Most of which could be reached via waterways from the Red or Mediterranean Sea via the Suez Canal.

But barges and other ships traveling the Suez were scrutinized for radiation. Depending on how well the bomb was shielded, it could be detected. Then again, if it wasn't being shielded - and shielded well - it would have already been detectable by satellite.

. . . of course, if there was any traffic going through those ports – or warehouses - that was legitimately radioactive, like nuclear waste in transit to disposal, or anything destined for a nuclear power plant, it would never get flagged at all.

Mac cast his mind back. He was pretty sure the Egyptians were building a nuclear power plant, but it was still under construction, if construction had even begun. That could at least legitimize traffic that had shielding equipment on board. "Nikki, can you pull up the location of Egypt's future nuclear power plant?"

"Yeah." A few clicks. "El Dubaa. It's about a hundred and seventy kilometers from Alexandria."

"And Alexandria is another two hundred kilometers from Cairo."

She apparently checked; he didn't bother to open his eyes.

"Close enough."

So they could be keeping the bomb in either Alexandria or Cairo, using shielding materials destined for El Dubaa to keep it under wraps.

"You have a list of all known properties and ships Zoheir has in Alexandria and Cairo?"

More typing. "Everything US intelligence has, at any rate."

It was a start.

"What're you thinkin', Mac?"

He let his hand drop to the couch. "If the bomb's not here in Sharm, it's still most likely somewhere in country, which eliminates the moon." He opened his eyes just long enough to shoot Jack a dirty look. "With the Arab Spring anniversary tying up the roads, it'll be easiest to move by ship or by air. Clearly they've got it shielded well enough to hide the radioactive signatures of the isotopes from satellite, so it makes sense that it'll be wherever there's legitimately an excuse for radiation to be present, or shielding equipment."

"And the future power plant has both sea and air ports." Nikki did a quick search. "He's got . . . three properties in Cairo, and one in Alexandria." A few more keystrokes. "I can put in a search string, when we get on site, for any cell or internet communication mentioning either city, but they're pretty major hotspots. We'd have to weed through a lot of garbage to get anything actionable out of that."

And possibly not in time to prevent the buyer from getting the bomb smuggled out to the final destination.

Still, it was better than nothing. And they could narrow down the field. "And if we knew the buyer?"

"Well, then that's a different story."

Then it would simply be a race, to see if they could get to the bomb before Zoheir could get it shipped to the new owner.

Jack shifted on the couch. "Dude, I know you remember the very explicit order we received regarding tapping into the Egyptian communications network –"

How could he forget. The Egyptian youth were already beginning the anniversary protests, they'd seen mobs of young men and women just on their way back to the resort in Sharm El-Sheikh. He didn't even want to think about what Cairo looked like right now. Every Middle Eastern government and military organization was dying for an excuse to blame these uprisings on Western influence.

But Mac didn't have to say a word. Nikki scoffed delicately. "Jack, the day I get caught by the Mukhabarat is the day I retire. We're only talking about hijacking a couple phones and a local wireless router. As long as you can get me into the auction, and run a little interference while I snapchat my girlfriends, we're good to go."

Mac heard fabric hiss as Jack sat up. "Whoa now, sister, what's this? You're not goin' to that auction, you're sittin' pretty in this here resort like a good field tech."

And he had a point. Nikki hadn't been on many out of country ops, and those she had attended in person, she'd stayed in the van or a hotel, safe and sound. Trotting her out as Samuel Thompson's blushing bride was a good cover for a gun runner's son to be at the resort for the auction, but actually _taking her_ to said auction had never been in the cards. She was way too green.

Mac opened his eyes in time to see the exasperation on her face. "It's just an auction, and we're not going to win. We already know the layout of all Zoheir's properties here in Sharm. And we've already IDed most of the players. If you want me to get into their phones quietly, I have to be actually there, in the room. Preferably within twenty-five feet of the buyer."

She and Jack faced off for another moment, then they turned in unison to look at him.

Mac sat up straighter and ran down the facts again. Finally he shook his head. "No. It's too dangerous. We may have IDed most of the players, but there will almost certainly be a few who won't show until the auction. If you're in there with us, you're not running facial rec or watching our backs."

That was clearly not what she wanted to hear. "Mac, I can't watch your backs anyway. No coms, remember? What do you expect me to do, text you?"

"A text is better than a bullet."

"And what happens if they ask you to leave your phones at the door?"

Mac decided that didn't actually require a response. She knew the answer as well as he did. If that happened, he'd improvise.

Though making a cellphone out of an endangered salamander and a piece of two thousand year old pottery was going to be a stretch, even for him. Then again, at least the buyer's phone would be relatively easy to get physical access to . . .

"Look, in the van or here at the resort I'm useless. On site I can still get images of all the players, and I can jack the phones without having to hack half of Egypt's ISPs. I don't see any other way we can get ahead of them."

Mac waited a couple beats, to see if anything else came to mind. If they couldn't get into the buyer or seller's phone or network, they weren't going to know whether to hit Alexandria or Cairo. They had no backup. They could head north tonight, and split up to search the properties, but even he knew that was a bad idea. If he didn't think she'd be safe with him and Jack right beside her, he sure as hell wasn't going to send her alone onto enemy property.

Besides, if the one he searched wasn't the one with the bomb, it wasn't like he could talk either one of them through a disarming procedure over the phone.

And there was always the chance that he was wrong. That Zoheir had another property right here in Sharm that they didn't know about, or he was wrong about Cairo or Alexandria being the most likely alternate sites. And they knew Zoheir had to have friends – or at least ears – within Egyptian law enforcement and intelligence, there was no way he could be running illegal deals on this scale with impunity if he didn't.

Mac opened his mouth, but then he closed it with a sigh.

Jack was watching him closely. "Mac, tell me you got somethin' better than date night with a bunch of terrorists and mercenaries."

He glared. "I don't like it either, but she's right. Any other plan has us following Zoheir or the buyer, and we'll always be a step behind. If the intel is right on the explosive yield of the bomb, and the isotope . . ."

Jack scrubbed a hand through his hair. "Yeah, yeah, I got it, we need to find the bomb. And it's nothin' against ya, Nikki, you know I love you but this is not a very nice group of people, you know what I'm sayin'?"

"Gee, I had no idea." She untangled herself from the desk chair, turning and disappearing into the master bedroom. Her voice became a little muffled, and Mac heard the double doors to the closet open. "Too bad I only brought my good guys and international heroes cocktail dress."

Jack shook his head and spoke in an undertone. "Mac, this is a mistake. These guys won't be playin' around-"

He matched the other man's volume. "Look, if things go south, you grab her and you get out."

Jack cocked his head to the side like an irritated german shepherd. "If things go south in there, _nobody's_ gettin' out. They get so much as a whiff that we're not on the up'n'up-"

"She's had training, Jack-"

"Yeah, dude, I know that, but she ain't had enough of it to walk into a Who's Who of every mid-level dirtbag in this hemisphere!" He brought his voice back down to a whisper with effort. "She freezes up once, Mac, just once-"

"If you've got a better idea, I am all ears." Mac gave him a good three seconds. "No? Then-"

Mac let it trail off as Nikki returned from the bedroom, holding a gunmetal grey cocktail dress. There was a little bit of metallic thread and beadwork sewn in here and there, and though it was on a hangar, Mac could immediately see that it was much more form-fitting than the styles she'd been wearing earlier.

"I don't think you can hide a gun in that," Jack observed.

She gave him a cool look. "All I need is my mobile and a Bluetooth extender." Then she glanced back down at the dress in her hands. "There was an embroidered wrap in a shop window a couple blocks into town. I think it would do the trick."

And make her slightly less attention-grabbing in the much more conservative Middle East.

Mac got to his feet. "Well, looks like we're going shopping. Need anything while we're out, Jack?"

If his partner minded the slightly sharper tone, he didn't say anything about it. "You see any good luck amulets, buy three. I'm gonna get some shuteye. Can't look this good without my beauty rest." He pushed himself up off the couch wearily.

Mac just shook his head as Jack looped the couch. "There's no such thing as luck, Jack. Good or bad."

"Yeah, you keep thinkin' that, bud." He crossed the room to the door. "You know what? Make it four. We might need a spare." He pulled open the door, giving the hallway a quick check. "See ya in four hours."

Mac waited for the door to close before approaching Nikki, who was uncharacteristically quiet, still studying the dress in her hands critically. She almost seemed surprised when he took one of them in his own and squeezed it.

"He's just looking out for you. You've only been in the field five months. _No one_ would blame you for being a bit nervous."

She smiled, a little wanly. "You both think I'm not ready."

Mac ducked his head a little, until he caught her eyes. "What do you think?"

She was silent a moment. When she did speak, there was some steel in her voice. "I think it doesn't matter, because it's the best shot we've got."

She wasn't wrong, and he felt his lips turn up. "I think you're right."

She returned the smile, then seemed to shake herself. "And what do you think about this dress? I brought it just in case."

"Just in case . . . you needed to attend a soiree on a moment's notice?"

Her smile turned playful. "It wouldn't be the first time."

He chuckled. "No it wouldn't." Mac made a show of studying the garment, taking it from her and holding it up, aligning the collar with her neck.

Nikki raised an eyebrow. "Really?"

"It's beautiful." Neither of them were looking at the dress, and he tossed it, hangar and all, carelessly onto the back of the sofa. "And I think it'll look even better later tonight, in a little pile on the floor."

-M-

"Okay, just wait." Mac starting ticking them off on his fingers. "You believe in ghosts-"

"Yep."

"-vampires-"

"Met one once."

"-aliens-"

"Oh yeah. We are not alone, brother."

"-Bigfoot-"

"Dude, there's proof."

"-the Bermuda triangle-"

Jack just silently raised his club soda.

"-and werewolves," and at that point Mac broke off with an incredulous laugh, "and you're telling me you have no problems with the Curse of the Pharaoh?"

They were standing around a glass case containing a complete set of artfully lit, three thousand year old canopic jars, and Jack Dalton, believer in all things magical, mystical, and otherwise totally debunked by science, stood staring at them like they were no more threatening than a potted plant.

"Well, that's 'cause there ain't no such thing as the 'Curse of the Pharoh'," and Jack made a one-handed air quote, his smile wide and sarcastic. "Everybody knows that."

"Everybody – everybody knows that," Mac repeated, glancing at Nikki. "Did you know that?"

She nodded, adjusting her wrap a little as she moved around the case. "I did, actually, I just didn't know that . . . that _Jack_ did-"

"Come _on_ , man, that whole 'Howard Carter's entire team died when they opened King Tut's tomb' was made up to sell papers." Jack took a sip of his club soda, sounding downright disgusted. "The first guy, Lord . . . uh, Carnivore-"

Mac closed his eyes with a faint grimace. "Carnavon."

"Yeah, whatever, he died from blood poisoning from a poor shaving job. The second guy, George, wasn't even there when it was opened, he just stuck his head in for a minute, Sir Archibald, the x-ray technician, he probably died of radiation poisoning from his own damn x-ray machine, the guy on the excavation team died of arsenic poisoning, and not til five years after they opened Tut's tomb. That whole 'curse' idea wasn't even a part of Egyptian mythology at the time, even they knew it was garbage. Carter himself died almost twenty years later of cancer or somethin'. There were almost sixty people there when they opened that tomb, and only eight of 'em died in a decade." He sniffed. "You ask me, that was a pretty wimpy curse."

Mac found himself just staring at Jack, and was slightly mollified to see that Nikki was similarly fascinated.

"So . . . did you hit your head after that nap, or . . ."

Jack rolled his eyes. "Listen, me and the boys, back in a previous life, we ended up in some previously uncharted ruins in Iraq. Oh yeah, stumbled right up on some mummies," he added, no trace of teasing in his voice. "The air pressure releasin' from the tomb door made us all hit the deck, I ain't gonna lie, but that was the most interestin' thing that happened."

Mac blinked. "Your old unit found an undiscovered tomb in Iraq?"

Jack nodded sagely. "Three of 'em. I mean, unless there's some kinda funk that can survive a couple thousand years locked in a rock, the worst we got was a little dust in our eyes. And that was _years_ ago, man. Years. Eventually one of my boys got a leg blown off in Afghanistan, but everyone's still alive and kickin'. If anybody shoulda been cursed, it shoulda been us."

Nikki retook Mac's arm, glancing up at him. "Is he messing with us?"

Mac just shook his head. "You know, I think he might actually be telling the truth." He glanced back around the room, just to reassure himself that he really was actually standing in a private gallery surrounded by priceless artifacts, deadly weapons, and venomous reptiles.

And that wasn't even counting the guests.

Zoheir had chosen the building they'd nicknamed 'the Zoo' for his auction. Egyptian Coptic art sat side by side with Zastava M80s, Soviet-made RPGs, and a zoo-quality display of live Palestinian Yellow scorpions. Their host had thoughtfully put the only bar beside the open-air viper pit, which was sunken about seven feet into the floor and took up nearly half of one wall, and after Mac had counted at least five venomous species he'd kept them mostly on the other side of the room.

As it turned out, the other guests were also more interested in the modern weapon and ancient blade displays than the exotics, and Nikki put her unencumbered hand to her wrap again, subtly adjusting the Bluetooth extender. Every once in a while she pulled out her phone, either to check the time or giggle at something someone had texted her. Otherwise, she stuck to his arm like an attentive little bride who knew exactly what her new husband – and his family – did for a living.

All in all, Mac was quietly impressed. She might not have much experience in this type of covert activity, but she was absolutely a natural.

Thankfully, she wasn't the only eye candy in the room. The auction wasn't exactly black tie – Mac supposed requiring a dress code from a bunch of mercenaries was asking a little too much – and he and Jack blended perfectly with the other well-tailored Italian suits. The locals were in their semi-formal warlord attire. Even the hired guns had at least made the effort of button up shirts. Waiters in black and white circulated with silver trays bearing local delicacies and the bidding devices.

Flat screen televisions placed strategically around the gallery showed the timer and current bid, but the bid fobs allowed all the bidders to remain anonymous. Mac had dropped out after the price had grown beyond the cost of the base materials, figuring at that point he could just build his own, and it had more than doubled since then. There was another hour on the clock, and small glasses of iced arak were being passed around to encourage the loosening of purse strings.

There was a sudden lull in the conversation around the room, and Mac's stomach chose that exact moment to comment – loudly - on the unique combination of things he had introduced it to over the past half-hour.

Jack raised an amused eyebrow across the glass case. "You gonna be okay?"

Mac valiantly pretended that he had no idea where the noise had come from as one of the other guests – the old Egyptian woman from their resort – looked him up and down with a knowing smile before turning back to the much younger man on her arm that Mac was beginning to think was not, in fact, her son.

Nikki gave his arm a soft pat. "Restrooms are just past the giant brown tarantulas."

"King baboon spiders, actually," he corrected, happy to latch onto a safer topic. "Most tarantulas are non-venomous, but those guys can cause severe pain and muscle cramps."

"Kinda like MREs," Jack murmured with a smirk. "I told you man, lentils give you the bubble guts."

Mac shot Jack an annoyed look. "I'm fine, and I haven't eaten any lentils, Jack. Baba ganoush is made mostly from eggplant."

"It was the garlic sauce," Nikki announced knowledgably, and Mac gave up and turned away from both of the amateur dieticians. A white suit and panama hat caught his eye, and Mac smoothly put his back to the entrance.

Well, that explained the lull in the conversation.

"Jack," he said softly, in the tone of voice that made his partner shut up instantly, "don't look now, but Colin Grier just walked in."

Jack plastered an easy smile on his face, and turned to be a little more square to Nikki, as if she'd said something amusing. He got a quick glimpse and also put his back to the door. "Shit."

Nikki looked between the two of them. ". . . who's Colin Grier?"

"An old friend of Jack's, from the CIA," Mac explained softly.

"A double-crossing good for nothing Judas of an informant." Jack's growl was less quiet. "He's a weapons broker for every low-life in South America. Got a bunch of agents killed. Been tryin' to find that asshole for _years_."

Nikki absorbed all that. "I take it he knows you on sight."

"Oh yeah."

"We're blown. Back exit?" Mac met both their eyes, confirming they remembered it from their unannounced visit earlier that morning, and Nikki grabbed her phone, scrolling down a list of devices.

"Wait." Her hand was iron on his arm. ". . . I don't have Zoheir's phone yet."

" _What?_ "

Her lips twisted up in exasperation. "The women's restroom is single use, it's not like I could camp out in there all night. I've got more than forty devices, but not his. He's using a Solarin."

Jack opened his mouth, so Mac beat him there. "It's a blackphone, agency specs. Same kind Oversight uses." He turned back to Nikki, already steering them to the next display case on the way to their exit. "How long will it take?"

She tilted the phone's screen – there was a progress bar, more than halfway but not yet two-thirds. It didn't move as he watched.

"It's been running about twenty minutes, and it's a brute force attack, so it could be anytime between now and –"

"Too long," he finished. They lingered briefly by the case, drifting to the next, and Jack did a quick sweep of Zoheir's security goons.

Nikki pulled them to a stop. "Look, he doesn't know my face, I could stay until-"

Mac drew his arm – and her hand – closer to his side, pinning it. "Absolutely not. Too many people have seen you with me. As soon as Jack gets made, we will be too."

And then it occurred to him that none of them – Nikki included – actually had to be present to finish hacking Zoheir's phone.

They crossed to the viper pit, and Mac calmly grabbed Nikki's phone, clicked the lock screen on, and dropped it into the exhibit. It plopped into a pile of sand, still intact.

Nikki's open-mouthed look of astonishment faded almost immediately as she caught on, and Mac gave her a little grin. "It's still connected to your laptop back in the van, right?"

She squeezed his arm a little. "You know it is."

"Great, problem solved, let's blow this popsicle stand," Jack muttered, taking the lead as they neared the bar and the two guards between them and the double doors that led to the warehouse portion of the gallery – and freedom.

Unfortunately, Grier had chosen the same moment to get thirsty.

"Jack Dalton!" His voice was booming, obnoxiously American, and several other guests turned to look their way. Mac slowed, letting Jack draw away from them a little.

"As I live and breathe!"

Colin had already motioned, and his men had hands on their weapons. The two security guards on the double doors were immediately on alert, so Jack did the only thing he could do. He leaned on the bar, grabbed the drink the bartender had just finished preparing, and he took a swig.

Whatever it was must have been pretty strong, because he paused a second, but refused to cough. "Colin Grier," he replied, his voice a little rough. "I really wish you'd stop."

The tall, curly-haired mercenary took a few steps closer, hands tucked comfortably into his trousers. "You gonna make me, Jack?"

Mac had managed to melt himself and Nikki back into a group of other bidders, but he could still see Jack's feral grin. "Sure am."

Grier laughed, sounding delighted by the prospect, and then Zoheir swept into the clearing, flanked by two more bodygaurds.

Their host had been rubbing elbows with the more affluent of the bidders, which had suited Mac just fine. Thanks to the Bluetooth extender, Nikki was still able to get close enough to establish a connection to his phone, and the less attention Zoheir had paid to them, the better their odds of staying unnoticed long enough to get to the back and bail Jack out of what was probably going to be a very short trip to the beach.

"What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?"

"One of your snakes got loose," Jack quipped, gesturing with the glass. Colin sneered.

"Seems the CIA is onto your little auction, Zoheir." A murmur went up around the room, and Mac eased them slowly towards the side door, instead. He wasn't the only bidder working his way out, and Mac thought they might actually make it before the side door opened, and a mountain of a man stepped through, letting it close behind him. He made no move to get out of the way.

Mac turned Nikki smoothly back to the spectacle by the bar, noticing the front entrance had been similarly barred.

Zoheir's men had pulled weapons as well, and Jack permitted himself to be relieved of his pistol, still leaning casually on the bar. "You're mis-informed. Just like old times." No one responded to the pun. "I ain't working for the Company. Haven't for years."

"Really. 'Cause I heard you got a new partner. I'm amazed anyone would trust their back to you after Honduras."

Jack took a step towards Grier, and Nikki's hand tightened on Mac's arm as half a dozen weapons came up in response. Zoheir glanced between the two, clearly considering his options. A young aide came up beside him, whispering in his ear, and he gave a curt nod.

"He came in with two others. Find them."

There was literally nowhere else to go, and Mac weighed the odds before he loosened his arm, signaling Nikki to stay back, and stepped forward. For a split second, he didn't think she would, but her hand trailed off his arm by the time he'd calmly worked his way to the front of the crowd.

"Hello," he called, unhurriedly crossing the empty space. A few guards turned weapons on him, and Mac offered them a wide, friendly smile, keeping his hands where everyone could see them.

"Sorry to ruin your party," and he gave Zoheir a nod. "But Grier's right. He's CIA. So am I. And all of you," and he made a slow, wide gesture at the watching bidders, "are under arrest."

He brought his hands back together in a soft clap, leaving a pleasant look on his face, and the crowd began a low, ugly murmuring. Which was exactly what he wanted. If warlords and mercs felt threatened, they were going to bail whether Zoheir's men were on the doors or not.

"And you must be MacGyver," Colin spoke over the rising rumble. "Thought you'd be older. 'Cause you see, if you weren't still in diapers, kid, you'd know that bluff isn't gonna work. Come on, it's Arab Spring!" He turned to include the audience. "You really think there's an American army out there? Get real. They sent you two in alone. You got nothin', kid."

Mac glanced at Jack, who was still holding the drink, wearing his game face. He shrugged.

"Why do they always pick the hard way?" Mac wondered aloud.

Jack pretended to give that thought. "History of poor life choices?" He hadn't even finished speaking before he threw the drink – and the glass – into the face of the guy nearest him, relieving him of his gun and stepping behind him as his cohorts fired.

After that, all hell broke loose.

Mac helped himself to the bar, grabbing anything he could get his hands on and lobbing it at the two guards between them and the back half of the warehouse. As soon as he got some breathing space he intentionally knocked over a decorative lantern, spilling lamp oil and flames across the surface of the bar. He could see the bidders were streaming towards the exits, and he heard a gun go off on the other side of the room. Mac glanced over, trying to catch sight of Nikki, and paid for it when what felt like a juvenile hippopotamus plowed into him from the left.

Mac went sprawling, crashing into the glass around the viper pit, and he managed to brace his back against it and kick the guy away. A bottle of vodka appeared from nowhere and smashed over his opponent's head, and the Egyptian stood there a second, stunned, before he slowly toppled sideways and revealed that Jack had already turned to deal with someone else. Mac scrambled to his feet just in time to duck under a haymaker, and he tackled his new opponent to the ground.

Mac landed three solid punches before he was grabbed from behind and hauled off the guard. He threw an elbow behind him, trying to wriggle free, and before he knew it he was pulled bodily off the ground. He lashed out with a foot, intending to shove off the glass wall and throw them both off balance, but the abused glass finally gave, shattering under his shoe, and his weight pulled them both forward, instead. The guard released him, shoving him away in an attempt to save himself, and Mac pitched headlong into the pit.

He bounced off a large rock and slid uncontrolled into the shattered glass and sand. The falling glass had caused most of the reptiles in the immediate area to slither clear, and Mac lay stunned a moment, trying to catch his breath.

An irritated hiss made him freeze, and then Mac ever so slowly raised his head, rolling his eyes as far as they could see without moving any further. Glass was dragging gently against something smooth, on his right, and as soon as he located the source of the sound he kicked sand in the snake's direction. It backed off with an angry spit.

" _Mac_!"

As soon as he was certain the area in his immediate vicinity was clear, Mac pulled himself into a sitting position, back against the rock, as Jack was dragged to the edge of the pit. Between the falling glass and the unceremonious addition of a large mammal to their exhibit, the reptiles were all becoming active and agitated, and the snakes above the pit were in much the same state.

Above them, on the ceiling, he could see the glow of flames.

Jack teetered on the edge of the pit, eyes wide. "Mac! You okay, man?! You bit?"

The guard jammed what Mac presumed was a gun deeper into Jack's back, making him bare his teeth, and Mac could make out two other men, not quite as near to the edge. Then Zoheir himself came into view, his face red, and peered down at him.

"You seem to be in a bit of trouble, Mr. MacGyver," he called. "There are eight types of viper in that pit with you. Seven of them will kill you quickly. The eighth . . . less so."

Mac glared at the man, then carefully got to his feet, hoping a tall target would be more intimidating. "Looks like we messed up your auction there, Zoheir. That's too bad. Oh, and got images of all your guests, too." He waited a beat, knowing that if he had Nikki, he'd trot her to the edge as well, but it didn't happen, and Mac allowed himself to relax, just a little.

"Images you will be too dead to share with your American friends." Zoheir gestured, and Jack was shoved – hard.

He fell much closer to the long wall than Mac had, into broken glass, and almost as if it had been scripted, an Egyptian cobra reared up from its hiding place beneath a narrow ledge on the rock wall, hood fully erect.

It would have been beautiful if it had been behind glass, or really anywhere not within two feet of his partner's face. The snake was a dark brown, with mottled ridges of lighter tan throughout the hood and on its belly. It didn't hiss, it merely curled there, staring him down, and Jack froze before Mac could say a thing. He'd landed mostly on his feet and fallen forward, so that he was leaning on his forearms, and he had no chance of catching it before it struck.

"Don't . . . move . . ." Mac cautioned softly. "It's just startled, it'll leave you alone if you stay still."

Jack blinked. The snake shifted about an inch to the right.

"Ah, an Egyptian cobra," their host called down. "The aspis. Snake of choice for Cleopatra's suicide. A more painless death than you deserve."

"Probably less painful than yours," Mac shot back, well aware that even raising his voice to speak to Zoheir was irritating the cobra further. "You and I both know those images are already sent. You invited a lot of very dangerous people into your gallery, and whoops, the auction fell through, and now the CIA knows where all of them are. Where do you think they'll come when the borders are closed to them?"

Zoheir's dark eyes sharpened, and Mac gave him a confident smirk he didn't feel. That Nikki was still on the loose was good. That Jack was about to get bitten by one of the most deadly cobras in the world, not so much.

"And what. You would offer me safe passage?" He scoffed. "From where I am standing, I am not the one in danger of losing his life. I will find the woman on your arm tonight, make no mistake. The auction may have ended early, but I honor my business dealings. The last bid received was the winner, and even after this place burns to the ground, he will take delivery."

Another dark brown snake – Mac couldn't tell if it was an Egyptian or a Cape cobra – edged around the rock beside him, and Mac kicked sand towards it. It drew back under the edge of the rock, but remained there, and Mac hesitated between aggravating it further or letting it hang out and watch.

"Last chance, Zoheir. We'll take all the Egyptian properties, but at least you'll be alive."

In answer, the man gave him a two fingered salute. Then he flinched as something shattered behind him. "Thank you for the warning." He turned to his guards. "Find the woman. And make sure nothing crawls out." Zoheir gave them one last, arrogant look, then he withdrew from the edge of the pit, and Mac swore under his breath, and focused back on his partner, who was trying to win a staring contest with a snake.

Jack was remarkably still, given his position, but that wasn't going to last forever. All his weight was on his forearms, and sweat was starting to drip down his face. "You're doing great, Jack," he murmured, glancing around the exhibit. Throwing sand would merely irritate the snake, at this point it felt good and threatened. He needed something a little more . . . persuasive.

Most snakes responded to motion.

Mac whipped off his suit jacket, using broad gestures, and the cobra shifted again, this time an inch towards him.

"Hey, fella," he greeted the snake, shaking out his jacket. "Trust me, you don't wanna bite him. He doesn't taste very good."

Jack let out a soft whimper, still without moving.

"I'm just going to lower this jacket between the two of you," he explained, in the same easy voice, "and then my friend Jack here is going to back up, and everything's gonna be fine."

Jack made what might have been an affirmative sound, or might have just been another whine, and then Mac held the jacket up by its shoulders, and started moving it like a curtain. He approached only as close as he needed to, watching the cobra. When it shifted another inch or so towards him, he edged the curtain slowly out, towards Jack.

Cobras were fairly slow-moving strikers, in comparison to, say, a rattlesnake. Most of the snake charmers they'd seen in Sharm were well aware of that fact, and knew the difference between the hypnotic movements of the snake and a true strike. A human with good reflexes could conceivably dodge.

The price of not dodging was getting essentially chewed on, and suffering multiple injections of venom that were many times the volume needed to kill an adult human being. If either of them were bitten, and didn't receive the antivenin within ten minutes, they would almost certainly die.

He slipped the jacket, nearly brushing the sand, ever so slowly between Jack's body and the snake, and the cobra twitched in the opposite direction, towards Jack. Mac stopped, almost holding his breath, and the cobra danced back and forth a few times, evaluating this new threat.

"That's it, buddy, just a few more inches and then Jack here can start moving back, and everybody can relax . . . "

He inched the coat a little further, and the snake hissed. However, the fabric was now almost completely between the cobra and Jack, and his partner blinked a few times gratefully.

"Now might be a good time to start backing up," Mac suggested softly.

"Snakes. Why'd it have to be snakes?" Jack whispered, slowly unfolding his legs.

"Are you seriously quoting Raiders of the Lost Ark at me?" Mac murmured, in the same soothing tone he'd been using before. The cobra hissed when Mac's arm shook a little, the motion exaggerated by the fabric.

"Hey, we're in Egypt, and you set a bar on fire." Jack ever so carefully shifted most of his weight off his forearms, and then drew them slowly back. The cobra could hear and feel the motion, but it couldn't see it, and it shifted an inch to the right, confused by the fabric.

"You can move faster, buddy, it can't see you."

Jack pulled himself to a sitting position, and Mac waited until he'd scrambled to his feet – and withdrawn back to the rock – before he pulled the jacket back, leaving a confused cobra rearing up at nothing.

The snake remained there, even dancing back and forth a few times as if confirming the coast really was clear, and then it lowered its head and withdrew, backwards, under its ledge.

Mac turned his attention on the other cobra, which had taken the opportunity to come out from under the much closer rock, and a brisk whack from his jacket had it withdrawing with a hiss.

"Cool trick with the jacket, bro. Thank you." Despite the fact that he'd mostly been laying perfectly still on the ground, Jack was a little out of breath, and Mac bonked the offered fist, and glanced back up at the edge of the pit.

The flames were now visible, at the edge of the of the exhibit, and belatedly Mac remembered the bottle of vodka Jack had broken over one of the guard's heads. The booze would have covered the floor between them and the bar. And it was only a matter of time before the fire spread to something a little more explosive than liquor. Like that table of Russian RPGs.

Going up was not an option.

"So, uh, how many jackets you think it'll take to keep them all off us?"

Mac lowered his gaze to his partner, and Jack flinched at his look. "Just askin', 'cause there's a lot of 'em, and they're headed our way."

Mac kicked sand at the curious cobra that kept trying to sneak around the bottom of the rock, and eyed the rest of the exhibit. Rock walls all the way around, with boulders scattered here and there. There had to be some kind of access hatch, some way to clean the exhibit-

He glanced up again, waiting for an alarm, or some type of sprinkler or fire suppression system to kick in, and found that the fire was now crawling down the wall towards them. He initially dismissed it as some of the vodka dribbling down the rocks, but then he backed up into the corner and used his knuckles to rap on the nearest rock wall. Way softer than stone.

"It's paper mache," he said aloud. And then it occurred to him what that actually meant.

Paper mache was typically made of actual paper and adhesive, both of which were readily flammable, even if the outside had been sealed. The fire was climbing steadily downward, the spilled vodka had been absorbed into the paper backing. In a very short time, every wall of the exhibit was going to catch.

"Think they got Nikki?"

Mac cast around the exhibit, looking for anything he could use. "No," he said distractedly.

No. They would have thrown her in with them. Even if they'd shot her first. Zoheir couldn't be happy about the loss of the building, even if he'd appeared to shrug it off. Nor was he out of danger from his clientele. They were sure to see this as a betrayal of trust.

Framing the CIA for the fuck-up was probably on Thornton's list of don'ts but there was nothing to be done about it now. In fact, unless there was another way out of the quickly-burning exhibit, a dressing-down from Thornton was the _least_ of their worries.

The boulders – and his back was empirically certain that those were real stone – were too sheer to climb; that was likely by design. As soon as all the walls caught, everyone would be forced into the middle of the exhibit, and the humans would certainly be viewed as a threat and bitten. As soon as the RPGs caught, the gallery and warehouse seven feet above them would turn into a Russian fireworks factory and come down on their heads.

There had to be _something_ -

Mac cast his eyes downward again, in case the persistent brown cobra to his right had gotten inquisitive again, and he found there was no sign of it. The snakes were all retreating to the far side of the exhibit, and as Mac watched, it looked like a salmon-colored snake about a meter long was literally sucked into the sand.

"Look, there-"

Most of the reptiles seemed to know the area existed, though only the most aggressive species were brave enough to cross the open space to it. The more timid species were trying to shelter in place, and Mac glanced back at Jack, then practically tore his blazer off him.

"Hey, man, what-"

"Get 'em moving," Mac ordered, and demonstrated by whacking at the bottom ledge of the nearest non-flaming wall. It startled the snakes out of their shelters, but luckily the jacket was more alarming than the fire, because most of them fled without challenge.

"Dude, are you kidding me?! I don't care _how_ endangered they are –"

"If they're not in front of us, they're behind us." The longer they had to wait for the frightened snakes to proceed, the longer they were going to have to stand around waiting for a flaming rock wall to fall on their heads. Something in the main room exploded with a deafening boom, and the vibration of it reverberated in Mac's chest.

That seemed to be all the encouragement Jack needed; he obediently slapped the base of the boulder nearest him. "Mush!"

It took them several minutes to herd all the snakes to the other side of the fast-burning exhibit, and in that time Mac was quite certain he heard an RPG explode. It was a good bet Zoheir and his guards had fled. If they did manage to find an exit from a basement they didn't even know the warehouse had, at least they didn't need to worry about being shot.

Probably.

As they approached the far side, what was actually a set of very steep stairs came into view, hidden from above by a paper mache ledge, leading down to a doorway about four feet high. The snakes weren't lingering on the stairs, they were pouring into the darkness, and Mac dragged one of his jacket sleeves through the sand on each stair, just to be sure, before he carefully stepped on the first one, and ducked his head inside the dark room, waiting for his eyes to adjust.

Fortunately he didn't have to wait long; someone turned on a light.

Mac blinked. He was perched about halfway down the wall, above a wide concrete tank, that was currently full of extremely agitated snakes. The snakes were piled almost an inch deep in places, and the walls of the concrete enclose were too far to reach. The rest of the room was outfitted like a stockroom, with shelves of live rodents and insects, and a pile of sand rakes in the corner.

There was no ladder in sight. There was, however, a camera.

Nikki. She'd triggered the door to open, and the lights.

Jack came up at his shoulder, and glanced into the room. "Hey Indy, why does the floor move?"

Mac didn't grace that with a response. Clearly this room was designed solely to receive the snakes while the exhibit got a good cleaning, and then something would be attached, there were eyelet hooks mounted on the interior of the small doorway, something would be mounted to the wall to let them climb back up.

Whatever that something was, it wasn't in view, and it wasn't meant for people. Mac edged further down the steps, glancing along the closest walls. There were a few long aluminum poles, with either hooks or nets on the ends, he might be able to lash them together to make a narrow ramp. But he'd have to telescope them to do it, and they were certainly going to be lightweight and flimsy.

Above him were the one and a half inch water pipes that likely fed the bathrooms Nikki had mentioned, and air handling for the exhibit itself. The water pipes were metal, but he couldn't tell what kind. Definitely not copper. Hopefully iron, and not aluminum with a plastic liner.

". . . you know, Indy might have been on to something," he murmured, and then he unfastened his belt and yanked it free. "Gimme your belt, Jack."

His partner had joined him on the stairs, though he was watching the burning exhibit in case they'd missed any non-legged friends. As soon as he got a good look at the room, he started to shake his head. "Oh, no, dude, tell me we're not going classic Pitfall with this one."

Despite his protest, he handed over the belt, and Mac strapped them together. Then he lashed the lengthened belt over the two water pipes, catching the other end as it came over. He gave the belts a good tug, and winced when the pipes gave a settling crack.

A second tug yielded no additional noises, and Mac flicked the belt as far down the pipes as he could, to give himself the furthest fulcrum for the swing. This was not something he wanted to misjudge.

"Mac, those toothpicks ain't gonna hold you."

"They will if they're galvanized iron or steel." The ceiling anchors, however, were a different story, and before he talked himself out of it, Mac grabbed the leather belts tightly, and kicked off. He sailed in a smooth arc over the concrete pen, and he released the belts as his feet hit the far lip, letting his momentum carry him forward to hop down to the floor.

Damage to the piping was minimal. One of the joiners was a little bent, but it wasn't leaking.

"Nice!" Jack held out his hand. "Throw me the whip."

Well, at least the movie quotes were consistent. "Jack, stay put, let me see if I can find something better-"

There was a massive explosion from above, and hot air and debris rushed through the small opening. Jack was blown off balance; he threw out his other hand to try to catch the wall but Mac could see the angle was wrong. He tipped forward in slow motion, windmilling his arms, and Mac leaned out over the concrete bin and swatted the end of the looped belts at him.

Jack's reaching hand caught the leather and he picked up his feet, way lower than Mac had been, and with a different fulcrum. He was more than halfway across before the pipes shrieked, and Mac braced his knees against the concrete barrier and reached out for Jack as the pipes gave.

His left foot made it to the lip of the concrete wall, and Mac's reaching hands caught the front of Jack's shirt and one of the pockets of his pants. He pushed backwards off the wall, using every ounce of his weight to counterbalance, and Jack slowly tipped forward as his other foot found the wall. He half fell, half rolled to the side to avoid crushing his partner as they pitched to the ground, and then they both got a face-full of water from the torn plumbing.

Sputtering, Mac fought to sit up, and then he was hauled to his feet by a bicep and pulled out of the stream. He shook the water out of his eyes, face to face with a grinning Jack Dalton, who pulled him into a fierce hug.

"Hah!" he exclaimed, clapping him on the back. Mac returned the gesture, still a little too shocked to celebrate. "Now let's get the hell out of here before a big-ass boulder runs our asses over."

Or a big-ass roof collapsed on them and buried them in a concrete room full of snakes.

Remarkably, the power was still on, and Jack led the way to the only door in the room. He felt it with the back of his hand before he yanked it open, and a smoke-hazed hallway terminated after only twenty or so feet in a set of stairs. Thankfully, that door opened inward, because the doorway was half-filled with debris, but Mac recognized the large rectangular space from their tour earlier in the morning.

They were in the warehouse portion of the building, near the rear loading dock. He'd mistaken this door for a janitor's closet.

They tore across the litter-strewn floor as the power finally flickered and died, and less than twenty seconds later they shot out the rear exit, coughing. Mac staggered to a stop a little behind Jack, blinking the smoke out of his eyes, and the first thing that came into view was a set of headlights.

Heading right towards them.

The loading dock was deep and down an incline, giving them nowhere to run but back into the burning building, so Jack stood his ground as the vehicle approached. The headlights were more rectangular than round, and a little higher than a normal car –

Finally it turned a little, so they were no longer directly in the glare of the headlights, and Mac could see it was the van.

Jack whooped in relief. "Curbside service!"

Nikki put it in park and climbed out of the driver's side door, looking none the worse for wear, save that her wrap was missing. She hurried towards them, inspecting them from head to toe.

"Are you guys okay?! Did you get bitten?! The nearest hospital is almost ten minutes-"

"We're good," Mac assured her, then punctuated it with a cough. "We're good."

She clearly didn't believe him, actually patting down his arms and looking at his hands before she pulled him into his second hug of the hour. "God, that was close-"

He hugged her back, tightly, and she didn't flinch or wince. This close to her he could see that her dress was neither stained nor torn. She must have gotten out with the rush of the other bidders and made a beeline for the van.

Mac gave her a final squeeze and let her go, and then she turned without hesitation and gave Jack the same patdown. "The camera angles weren't great, it looked like you fell right in –"

Jack similarly received a hug, and Mac didn't miss the way he also evaluated her, finding the same lack of injuries that Mac had. "We scare ya, darlin'?"

"Shit yes." She pulled away, putting a hand to her forehead. "When the building blew, I thought-"

"And now you know why I have all this grey hair."

They turned back to the van as a team, Jack heading for the driver's seat and Mac happy to leave it to him.

"Is this when you pull out an 'I'm too old for this shit' line?" Nikki prompted.

Jack chuckled as he swung into the van. "You're still newish, so I'm gonna let that one pass. Lethal Weapon is no Die Hard. Besides, it's not the years, honey. It's the mileage."

Mac grimaced. "Don't encourage him. He's got a neverending library of these."

"Just the greats. And Han Solo is definitely one of the greats."

Nikki pulled the sliding door shut. ". . . he does know the actor's name is Harrison Ford-"

Mac just waved her off. "I know the last twenty minutes were kind of hectic, but did we get Zoheir's phone?"

He heard some rapid typing. "No." Mac rubbed his eyes, still trying to get the combination of water and smoke out of them, and then her voice took on a pleased lilt. "But we did get the buyer."

Mac dropped his hand and exchanged a glance with Jack, who put the van into gear and started backing up.

"Great. Who's the lucky winner?"

"A gentleman by the name of Chelem Farhad." More typing. "And you'll never guess where he's headed."

-M-

Because I can't seem to do concise, I've decided to split up my version of the Cairo mission into two parts, Day One and Day Two. The writers dropped a lot of "hints" about Cairo in the first season, and what we saw didn't really add up. They added a few things in season two, and so I started working with the following clues:

  * At Lake Como, according to Jack, Cairo was Mac's fault.
  * They had no backup in Cairo.
  * Nikki reminds Mac that "Whatever happens, we'll always have Cairo." (She delivered that line in a bedroom, suggesting they had a good time.)
  * On the season one finale, Jack is unpacking food and states it is to celebrate "not getting' snakebit, shot, nuked, or flambeed in that vortex of death Cairo." (Got two of those covered so far . . .)
  * Traditional garlic sauce eaten with pita gives Mac "the bubble guts."
  * Thornton's intel told them it was a dirty bomb, but Mac and Jack had no idea it was going to be set off in Cairo.
  * For some reason, Jack has no qualms desecrating Egyptian mummified remains, but is superstitious about literally everything else.



I still have the following clues left to cover in Day Two:

  * At Lake Como, the boat's fuel line getting ruptured (by bad guy bullets) was "just like Cairo." The bubble gum could have been a reference to Cairo, but frankly also any other time Mac solved a problem with bubble gum.
  * Also at Lake Como, Jack refused to be handed the biologic because of what happened in Cairo.
  * Also at Lake Como, almost getting killed was "just like Cairo."
  * The medallion of the Phoenix that Riley picks up (which is hanging randomly on stuff on their back deck, in the elements?) came from Cairo.
  * They (possibly all three of them) made a pact never to work on Cairo Day, because it was bad luck.
  * Matty refers to it as the "disastrous mission in Cairo."
  * Mac straight up states that the season one finale "really is Cairo all over again. You have two options: one, you can leave, or two, we all die."
  * In Cairo, Farhad calls MacGyver by his name, so he knew it before he entered the warehouse.
  * Neither Mac nor Jack are injured when they enter/search the warehouse, and Jack is in a relatively good mood.
  * Somehow Nikki was supposed to be "blocking their signals", yet Bozer had called five times.



Wish me luck.


	4. And Pita

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

 **Content Warnings** : Some coarse language, the reanimated dead, and somewhat graphic violence.

-M-

**DAY TWO**

It took them about seven and a half hours to make the six hour drive, and given that they made the majority of it overnight, that was saying something.

The Egyptian youth were taking the Arab Spring anniversary very seriously, blocking main thoroughfares and key intersections to ensure their message was heard, even in the dead of night. A few of the kids had approached the van at one point, shouting, but all Jack had had to do was roll down the window and give them a thumb's up and a grin, and they were allowed to pass unmolested.

He was on the final stretch to Cairo now, about eight kilometers east of the 50-65 split, and a heavy police presence had eased up traffic somewhat. The pavement was in relatively good condition, and the desert sky was ablaze with stars.

Nikki was their night owl, but she'd given up the ghost about two hours ago, changed into something warmer, and curled up in the back of the van. To the best of her estimation, they were about five hours ahead of Farhad, who had not immediately set off for Cairo. She couldn't track him the usual way, and could only access his phone when it was connected to wifi, but luckily this particular dirtbag was rather fond of tech.

Mac had been working on getting them more intelligence on Farhad, but after his last call to DXS he'd drifted off, and Jack glanced over at him from time to time, his head bouncing gently against the van window as he slept.

It was like the last two years never happened. The only things missing were his rifle and Mac's helmet.

Their day wasn't going to be all that much different, either. He'd spend it tired, trying to cover Mac's scrawny ass while he scampered all over a sandy foreign city oblivious to everything but finding and disarming a bomb.

Jack was forced to slow as they approached a tollbooth, merging in with the other traffic as they were crammed into a single lane. A lot of trucking happened overnight, taking advantage of the cooler temperatures, and soon red brakelights blotted out the stars.

On his right, Mac sucked in a deep, sleepy breath. It took him a few seconds, but then he straightened in his seat with a constrained little stretch, glancing around. "Where are we?" His voice was soft.

"About a hundred and twenty klicks east of Cairo."

His partner digested that, then started rummaging around – again, quietly – in the coin tray, picking out the toll. "We hit any other trouble?"

"Nope." It would be dawn in a couple hours, and they could count on the students to continue to disrupt traffic across Egypt. The last message Nikki had intercepted made it sound like Farhad was coming by truck, and bringing some of his men with him. He was toeing the line between the minor and major leagues when it came to smuggling weapons from Egypt into Chad and Sudan, and while his adoption of tech was in line with the times, he was definitely old-fashioned when it came to ideology. He could be planning on deploying that bomb pretty much anywhere in the Middle East.

Luckily, the daytime traffic would probably slow Farhad and increase their lead. Which was a good thing, since Zoheir had three brick and mortar properties and two barges in or near the city proper they needed to search. Their orders were still the same; disable the bomb and arrest the buyer – and seller, if they could get their hands back on Zoheir. Despite the setbacks, Jack was finally feeling a little more positive about their odds.

"Anything from DXS?"

A little glow reflected off the windshield. "No," Mac responded after a moment. "Though it looks like I missed a call from Bozer." He scrolled through his other messages. "Nikki's mapped the most efficient route to hit the three buildings. I still think they're more likely to house the bomb than the barges."

They crept closer to the toll booth, which was low tech and operated by a human, and Jack reached into a compartment in the dash, pulling a couple passports free. "Just in case." He exchanged them for the coins in Mac's hand, and his partner flipped open the first one.

"Always liked Luka," he murmured. They'd arrived in country as the Thompsons and bodyguard, but if that cover fell through, they'd packed a much more benign one. Now that they were going into Cairo itself, being a gun runner's son was probably not the best option.

Instead, they were with the media. Luka Morrow was a journalist with Reuters, and he had his trusty photographer Ethan Darby and sound and video editor Alicia Gentry with him. It gave them an excuse to have a van and the surveillance equipment and tech, and hopefully they'd blend in with the rest of the foreign journalists.

Mac spent another moment studying the passport. "Hey, want to switch out, so you can get some sleep?"

Jack shook his head, easing the van forward. "Nah. I'll get me some Turkish coffee once we get to civilization."

Beside him, Mac became very still. ". . . tell me you're joking."

Just the memory of that day was enough to bring a smile to Jack's lips. "Relax. I'll drink it out of those dumbass tiny cups this time, 'stead of my camelbak."

-M-

He took a deep breath, committing the scent to memory. Wood smoke. Explosives. Charring. Chemicals. Salt. Seared metal. Gasoline. Diesel fumes.

His aide trotted up, a tablet in his hand, and Zoheir exhaled and accepted it, glancing at the manifest. Not a total loss. Some of the exotics had pulled through, and the entire northwest corner of storage was almost untouched. Looking at the building, lit by emergency vehicles and floodlights, he was amazed any of the structure was standing at all.

The young man beside him held up a small clear baggie. A sandy black smartphone was inside.

"Akmal found this in the viper pit," his aide murmured. "No bodies."

Zoheir took another deep breath, now detecting a faint, sickly sweet odor he couldn't quite place. Not the scent of dead CIA operatives, clearly.

His aide hesitated. "We're not sure if it belonged to the American agents. The battery is dead, but we may be able to –"

Zoheir gave a sharp nod. "Whatever it takes. Track them down."

In his pocket, his own phone vibrated, and Zoheir ignored it, eyes raking over the building. "Search the area hospitals. I want to know if anyone received antivenin last night."

Another deep breath.

This was the fragrance of setback. A mistake.

Disappointment.

And he made a promise to himself, to never experience it again.

In his pocket, his phone gave a short, sharp buzz – a voicemail being left. Zoheir took one last look at the skeleton before him, and then he turned and folded himself into the car. It was still a few hours before dawn, but there was much to do.

-M-

"Done."

She held out both phones, which Mac accepted and distributed, and eyed the monitor a moment. Sure enough, the token test passed, and she was about to declare it good when one of them started ringing.

Mac glanced at his phone, then back at her. "Boze," he said, by way of explanation, and silenced the call.

"Yes," she agreed, confirming the re-route on the screen. "You both know that the Egyptian government requires all mobile handsets to be registered with the NTRA, to prevent them from being used to remotely detonate bombs. The phones in your hand are Chinese knock-offs with duplicate serial numbers, so they'll eventually get detected and disconnected. You've probably got about fourteen good hours with them. We should be gone before then."

"Good, 'cause the old ball an' chain has called you like three times already."

Mac chose to familiarize himself with the phone's features, rather than roll his eyes where Jack could see. "And communications are encrypted?"

"Yes they are." She indicated her laptop. "Every incoming and outgoing call and SMS is getting routed through here, over wifi, and encrypted on this hardware. As far as any foreign intelligence agency is concerned, those phones are never going to leave this van, and never get a call. Just don't enable GPS on the device itself."

"Yes ma'am," Mac murmured agreeably, and then he slipped the device into the thigh pocket of his cargo pants. "And you'll have eyes on us?"

She glanced at the map, showing two green dots on top of the yellow dot. "If you two ever bother to actually get to work, sure . . ."

"Ooh," Jack murmured, tucking his phone into the rear pocket of his black jeans. "Did someone wake up on the wrong side of the van this morning?"

Nikki took a deep breath and rolled her neck, trying to ignore the sticky feeling. "It was the side without the air conditioning, so you tell me."

Mac winced in sympathy. "Look, I know it's a little warm, but you'll have more shade than any other van out there once the sun gets a little higher, and trust me, they're all gonna be jealous of your parking spot."

She glanced out the back door, where a real, honest to god Reuters van was only a few yards away. Beyond that was ZNN. They'd been attracted to this spot for the same reason she was – consistently good wifi. It was the only way she could encrypt their cellphone communications without tipping off the Mukhabarat, and without coms, the mobiles would have to do. The custom one-way GPS app she'd installed allowed the phone to report its location directly and only to her. Her signal repeater then put the wireless communications back on the GSM network, giving them the best coverage in the city.

"Well, at least I'll have someone to talk to."

Jack moved back towards the front of the van, and retrieved a white cardboard box. "Well, you might not have ol' Jack's soothing voice in your ear, but this oughta sweeten the deal a little."

She accepted it, assuming it was some kind of breakfast – she'd already downed the coffee, and was definitely going to need more before the day was over – and opened the cute little box to find two triangles of baklava nestled in pastry paper.

Nikki found herself smiling. "Yeah, this should help," she agreed. Then she fixed them both with a stern look. "Remember, exfil is the maintenance airstrip off Egypt Air's factory at six pm local time. The director hinted that we probably didn't want to miss it this time around."

Mac's eyebrows twitched. "You picked up on that too, huh?"

"She was fairly straightforward." And as close to using expletives as she'd ever heard her boss.

"Don't suppose she said anything about gettin' me another weapon?"

Nikki glanced at Jack, noticing for the first time that the pistol that had been taken from him last night had been his only firearm. Their mission should have been over and done in twenty-four hours, and unless the arrests had gone poorly, there wouldn't have been a need for serious firepower. Besides, Zoheir was a weapons dealer. Jack had probably figured if he'd needed additional hardware, he could get his hands on it relatively easily.

And he probably still could, if it came down to it.

Which it shouldn't, since apparently Zoheir only had the one man in Cairo waiting for Farhad, who was hours behind them.

Nikki shook her head mutely.

Jack shrugged it off, sliding open the van's side door. "Didn't think so," he mumbled, almost to himself. "Not like I'd need a gun to keep you chuckleheads safe from a weapons dealer and a bus full of terrorists-"

"Yeah, and I'd like to see you explain why you're carrying when we get stopped by the local leos," Mac shot back good-naturedly, following the older agent out the door. "Think you forgot your camera, there, Ethan."

Jack ducked his head back in the van, and Nikki stood up and handed him the DSLR by its strap.

"Thanks. And just for the record, this does not count as shooting."

"You boys behave yourselves," she replied, and Mac gave her a quick grin. The van door rumbled closed behind them, and she blew out her cheeks and helped herself to the baklava, watching the green dots as they made their way into the alley on the opposite side of the vehicle and towards the next block.

She didn't need coms to figure out the exact moment they'd located and appropriated a vehicle, and she had actually launched a couple apps before she remembered that she was not allowed to suppress any police reports regarding the stolen vehicle. She wasn't even allowed to listen in, though her eyes roamed to the shelf in the van that should have held radio equipment. This was truly a skeleton rig, not meant for any major surveillance, and outside of the large black shipping crate and the narrow table, she really didn't have much in there with her. A few screens, a couple systems, the power supply, and of course the cell repeater and a few routers.

Which left her with not a whole lot to do.

Being bored in the van was usually not an issue. There was always _something_ going on. Facial rec, recording the op, tweaking the coms for optimal distance or clarity. Her only meaningful task now was to record their locations, which was happening quite automatically, and she mentally planned how she was going to jigsaw all the equipment back into the shipping crate about four times before she couldn't take it anymore.

Just like Mac had predicted, the real news techs soon emerged from their own toasty vans, waiting, like she was, for something to happen. Nikki killed about forty-five minutes talking shop with a guy from Reuters, and learned that Connie in Eastern Europe was actually still seeing Troy from Central Europe, even though the ops director had intentionally split them up - out of more than professional jealousy, if she knew what he meant - and the whole thing had put a crapper on what should have been Adam's whopper of a front pager. She explained that she usually covered South America, and they had plenty of drama of their own. The ZNN guy eventually wandered over to their patch of shade, which Nikki was grateful to see really did seem to center on her van, and they eventually started a pros and cons list of the latest parabolic mics from Klover and Jony.

When her watch timer finally vibrated, Nikki excused herself and climbed back into the van, which was still uncomfortably stuffy, but not dangerously warm. The equipment was operating within parameters, and the green dots she'd been watching on her mobile were en route to their second of three locations. The morning's coffee had finally filtered through, and Nikki glanced out the windshield, wondering which direction was most likely to have publicly accessible restrooms.

A notification chimed, and Nikki glanced back. It was her laptop, showing a new device connection.

Frowning, Nikki toggled over and pulled it up. It was the list of devices she'd amassed at the auction. All Farhad's SMS and calls were getting cloned to her mobile device, but only when he was connected to wifi, and he'd been quiet for hours – she assumed he was on the road, headed to Cairo. It wasn't his phone that was flashing.

It was a new device. It had connected via her old mobile.

The one that Mac had tossed into the snake pit. That had later been lit on fire and then blown up.

Nikki clicked on the new device, checking the OS. It was a Solaris.

She'd finally gotten a connection to Zoheir's phone.

Nikki checked the timestamp on the log, and found that she'd actually completed the hack hours ago – the two devices had only now re-connected to wifi. A slew of SMS messages started uploading, and she sent them through a translation program, skimming them. A lot of instructions related to the lost warehouse. Communications she'd already seen from Farhad's phone, related to meeting Zoheir's man in Cairo for the exchange, and confirming receipt of the cash. She'd gotten the account info from Farhad's phone, but Nikki double-checked the messages, to see if Zoheir had already moved it to another account.

If he had, he hadn't done it via his mobile.

The Solaris said he was on the Red Sea, having just boarded a ferry bound for a port in Saudi Arabia, and it had auto connected to the ferry's wifi. Zoheir was fleeing the country.

Nikki pulled up a window and summarized all that in a text, sending it to both Jack and Mac. More SMS messages were coming in, but Nikki toggled over to her old mobile, checking on the battery. It had lasted way longer than she expected, even after the warehouse wifi went out –

The battery was at 100%. And the phone was unlocked.

Nikki disconnected it with a single keystroke, and then she stared at her systems for a moment. Nothing seemed to happen, and she immediately checked the firewall logs. The only reason someone would have charged and unlocked the phone was to find them. They would have found the list of hacked devices, they would have seen the connection out to her laptop –

They would have seen it hours ago. When the phone was brought back online and finished hacking Zoheir's. And if they were capable enough to unlock her phone, they should have damn well seen what she was trying to do.

Which meant the SMS messages she'd just read had been faked. Maybe the GPS coordinates too. Zoheir wasn't on his way to Saudi Arabia. Nikki toggled back over to the ones she hadn't read yet. Confirmation that Zoheir's men hadn't been able to track the Americans. A reservation at a posh resort in Duba.

Which meant he'd either never left Egypt, or he'd headed in the opposite direction.

Raised voices outside the van drew her attention, and Nikki glanced out the windshield. The news van in front of hers – Al Bawaba – had its back doors open, and a red-faced tech was arguing with two police officers. A glance out the back window showed her that her pal from Reuters was getting similar treatment.

Someone banged on the side door, then tried the handle. It didn't open; Mac had obviously thought to lock it before he'd left. Nikki put the laptop into protected mode, which locked all the connected systems, and then very carefully leaned over and softly depressed the manual lock on the back doors. There was another authoritative knock on the side door, and then the van actually shook with the attempt to pull the sliding door open. She used the movement to disguise her own, heading over to the black packing crate. Without hesitation she pulled the lid off and curled up inside, letting the lid settle back into place above her.

They'd let her phone reconnect to the laptop to trace out where she was. And then Zoheir had dispatched his dirty cops to collect her. They knew she was connected to this wifi hotspot. They just didn't know which van she was in.

There was a brief silence, then a strange metallic scraping. It didn't last long; only a moment later she heard the lock pop up, and the sliding door was thrown open. Nikki didn't move a muscle, breathing silently through her mouth as two people piled into the van.

There was some muttering in Egyptian Arabic, and she heard them shuffle towards the equipment. There was some hammering on the keyboard, but these were clearly not the guys who had hacked her phone, and soon enough they broke off to contact someone on radio. The next sound she recognized definitively was the _thunk_ of the power supply being shut off.

That was bad. The laptop had its own battery and would remain operational, but all the equipment connecting it to Mac and Jack had just been shut down. That meant no encryption and no masking. Every call and text they received from here on out would go directly to their phones over the normal Egyptian GSM network.

Worse, her old mobile had their numbers. Everything Zoheir needed to get a location on them.

Someone on the radio said something else, and the two cops moved back towards the sliding door. Nikki waited impatiently for the sound of their boots, hitting the pavement.

Instead, the lid of the crate was ripped off, and Nikki looked up slowly into the barrel of a gun.

And it struck her that Jack had really nailed this one on the head. She'd taken a page out of Indiana Jones, hiding in the crate like Marion had hidden in the hamper. And like Marion, she'd gotten caught.

And if memory served, the next thing that happened was the truck exploding.

-M-

"Now when he was a young man, he never thought he'd see, people stand in line to see the boy king -King Tut," and Jack snapped his fingers and spun to the beat, not missing the dirty look he received from his partner. It didn't deter him in the slightest. "How'd you get so funky? Funky Tut." He added the percussion, just in case Mac didn't know the tune, and threw up his hands, directing the sung question directly at the blond. "Did you do the monkey?"

Mac ignored him, rifling through another crate, and Jack moved into the bridge, striking his best 'walk like an Egyptian' pose. "Born in Arizona, moved to Babylonia – King Tut." Jack raised his hands and clapped twice, throwing a little tango in with his hips.

Mac leaned up from the crate, glancing from his dance moves to his face. "Are you done?"

Jack nodded. "Yeah, I don't know the rest of the words. I do know he had a condo made of stona-" A line of figurines and statues caught his eye, and Jack headed towards them even as his partner sighed.

"Focus, Jack. We need to find this thing, alright?"

He was plenty focused. The last cup of Turkish coffee he'd tossed back had made sure of that. And they might as well have been in Hangar 51, considering all the Egyptian relics just lying around. Jack moved down the line of artifacts, noticing a distinct theme. "So I don't get it, what's the deal with all the cats?"

"Cats were known as mau." Mac came around the corner, looking over the same collection, and some of his irritation seemed to melt away. "They were sacred in ancient Egyptian civilizations. Some were known as gods and goddesses, actually."

Letting Mac nerd out was one of Jack's favorite ways to defuse him. Still, that was a crapload of cats. "One good dog would've taken care of all of that," he observed.

Mac pointed down the line of life-sized figures. "Anubis there, he was part dog."

Jack glanced over at a particularly ostentatious statue, his eyebrows shooting up. "Really." He stared at the gilded black man-doberman a moment, not really caring that Mac had already walked away. "That's one ugly mutt."

Anubis didn't respond, one way or the other, and Jack turned and followed his partner, finding Mac tossing packing straw carelessly over his head as he ripped through yet another box. They'd been doing that for literally hours, and outside of getting sweaty and filthy, they'd found nada.

This property wasn't even on the list; they'd searched all three of Zoheir's known buildings with no joy. Mac had happened to spot a shipping manifest on a couple of the larger crates at the last address, and that had led them here. It was more of a staging warehouse than anything else. They'd texted Nikki the address, but she was apparently still digging up information on the owner; she hadn't responded yet. Radio silence also meant Farhad hadn't been texted the actual meet address, which was a good thing in Jack's book. Farhad was probably still stuck in traffic, hours away. Still, it meant yet more real estate to toss, and the only real action Jack had seen all morning was taking out the single, obviously dirty police officer guarding this joint and tying him to a support column.

The guy hadn't even had the common decency to be armed.

Since Mac seemed to have the next couple crates handled, Jack continued down the aisle, lighting up when he saw a huge, colorfully painted sarcophagus. He pulled it open, surprised to find it actually had an occupant.

"Whoa . . . oh hohoho," he chuckled, and then he grabbed the mummy by its neck and tipped it out of the sarcophagus to look at his partner. ". . . Mac?"

The blond glanced up, then visibly flinched, and Jack couldn't help himself.

"My mummy thinks you're hot."

Mac was _not_ amused. "Stop it," he snapped in a half whisper, stalking towards them. "It's three thousand years old!"

Jack made a face. "Oh, so what." Just because something was old didn't make it valuable, in Jack's book. He glanced back at the mummy, whose mouth was permanently affixed open, and shook it a little, animating it like a puppet. He made his voice a painful croak.

"Mummy, can my friend come over for dinner?" He pinched the mummy's mouth, trying to get it to smile, and Mac gave him a flat look.

"Put it back"

Jack frowned at him, but dutifully stuffed it back into the sarcophagus. "Okay, fine."

Party pooper.

He didn't say it out loud – he was pretty sure – but Mac seemed to hear it.

"Glad you can find the humor in this." He gestured at the warehouse in general, then gave up and turned around in disgust. "Like being on a mission with an eight year old," he continued, muttering to himself as he walked away.

"Well of course I'm gonna find the humor in it, bro." He gestured at their surroundings. "What, would you rather me be curled up in the corner in the fetal position soilin' my adult diapers?"

His partner didn't respond, and Jack turned in time to see that Mac had fixated on what looked like a much older crate, covered in Egyptian hieroglyphs and in a very familiar shape. Kinda reminded him of-

Oh _hell_ no.

Any feelings of good humor evaporated into the noon heat, and Jack hurried to catch up. "Now, wait a second, Mac . . . Mac!" Annoyed blue eyes turned his way, and Jack held up an apologetic hand. "Don't . . . don't touch this one, okay?" He dropped his hand to his partner's dusty shoulder. "It looks like the Ark of the Covenant."

The moment it came out of his mouth, he knew what it sounded like, and it was pretty clear Mac wasn't taking him seriously, because he huffed out a sigh and continued towards it like a five year old who had just been told not to stick his hand in the fireplace.

Jack tightened his grip on Mac's shoulder. "No. Seriously. I don't want my face to melt off."

Mac was unimpressed, inspecting the lid of the crate. He found an opening and got a few fingers under it. "Look away," he suggested simply, and then yanked.

Jack barely had time to get his eyes closed before he heard nails creaking and wood splintering. "Well, it's your funeral-"

He turned his face away and backed up, just in case the closed eyes alone wouldn't cut it, and he couldn't help a flinch as the wooden lid hit the concrete floor with a loud crash. There was a brief and terrible silence.

Just like in Raiders of the Lost Ark, before the pretty ladies popped out and then turned into face-eating demons.

When Mac finally spoke, it was barely above a whisper. "Nope . . . it's all our funerals."

Jack dared to crack an eye open, and when he was sure there was no wind or ghosts visible, he joined Mac beside the crate, peering in. And saw something that was nearly as bad as face-melting lightning.

"Ooh, yahtzee."

His partner silently agreed, inspecting what was, in Jack's opinion, a very intimidating looking bomb. The board and timer were prominently displayed in the center of the device atop what looked like a square foot sheet of C4 and a hundred pound bag of fertilizer. Jack had no doubt there were several more, under the packing straw. There were four tanks nestled in the corners of the crate, chained closed, connected by red and yellow wires. Radiation and toxic chemical warning stickers covered them.

"Dirty bomb. Just like Thornton said."

Jack stared at the timer, relieved to see that it appeared unlit, and then almost jumped out of his skin as a series of beeps shattered the silence. Beside him, Mac flinched as well, but by then they'd both realized it was just the default ring tone of the phone Nikki had given Mac.

Jack put a hand to his chest, physically restraining his pounding heart, and looked back into the crate, just to be absolutely sure they hadn't activated the bomb. Beside him, Mac fished the phone out of his back pocket and glared at the caller ID.

"It's . . . Bozer."

Jack glanced at him. "That's like the fifth time he's called."

"Yeah, I know." Mac frowned, continuing to stare at the ringing phone.

Jack blinked at him, and it rang again. "Well, answer it! It might be important."

Mac's eyebrows bunched. "And . . . this isn't?" He gestured at the bomb – which appeared to be totally unaffected by the noise – and Jack was about to withdraw the suggestion when his partner relented.

"You might be right. It's a video call." Mac spun, surveying the aisle, and then headed briskly towards the front of the building. "I need to go find a background that doesn't look like I'm inside of a . . . well, _wherever_ we are-"

Jack watched him go, then realized that left him standing next to a giant radioactive bomb. He took off after Mac, who was still muttering to himself, and watched as the younger man put his back to a very tall and mostly unlabeled crate. Since there was no reason for Jack to be anywhere near Mac right now, given that Jack hadn't gone to the energy conference Bozer thought Mac was attending, he continued to the front wall of the building, peeking through the dusty windows to make sure there wasn't a patrolling cop they'd missed.

Bits and pieces of the conversation floated over to him.

"Hey man." Jack almost chuckled at Mac's attempt at casual.

"Mac." Boze did _not_ sound happy. "'Bout time you picked up. You have any idea how late I am for work?"

"Any chance that, uh, this can wait, and I can call you back?"

"You forgettin' something?" Apparently the answer was no. Jack moved on to the next set of windows, checking the main road.

"Boze, I'm, uh, I'm busy right now-"

"And so am I, man. And it was your turn to buy the Honey Nut Cheerios."

The chuckle had turned into a fond grin – Jack really did love that kid – and he was about to move to the adjoining wall when motion in the near distance caught his eye. Two vehicles – no, three, coming around the guardpost. Moving fast. A quick headcount showed all three were full, and what looked like the barrels of AKs were silhouetted against the back glass.

The guy in the front passenger seat was the spitting image of the photo DXS had sent them last night.

Mac didn't seem to hear them, and Jack wasted no time in heading back towards him.

"Ooh, yep. I, uhm, I forgot to do that. I'm . . . I'm sorry. I'll do that as soon as I get back from . . . Cleveland-"

Bozer was still talking, and Jack came around the corner, frantically making cut-off gestures. Mac glanced between him and the phone a few seconds, then gave up and put it against his stomach as tires crunched through gravel.

Jack kept his voice low. "Cut it off, man. Farhad's men found us."

"What? How?!"

Car doors opening – and automatic weapons being racked – drew their attention to the front of the building. Jack gave them ten seconds, tops, before men were going to be pouring through the main door. His hand almost went to the small of his back before he remembered that he was unarmed.

Repelling these guys was not an option.

"I dunno." His eyes fell on the phone, still pressed to Mac's stomach. "They musta tracked your cellphone-"

Mac glanced at it, keeping his thumb over the camera and mic. "I . . . thought Nikki was blocking our signal!"

So had he. Still, it was the only thing that made sense. Mac had torn the manifest off the crates when they'd left Zoheir's warehouse, so there hadn't been a copy for Farhad to find, and Nikki hadn't texted, which meant Zoheir hadn't tipped Farhad off. "Well . . . you thought wrong. I'm hidin', I suggest you do the same."

He took off immediately, hearing Mac stutter through a promise to call Bozer back, and as soon as the kid passed him, Jack ducked into the sarcophagus and closed his eyes. If he could get one of these guys alone, he could get himself a weapon, and start evening their odds -

Jack didn't see where Mac ended up, but it was only seconds before the door crashed open, and he lost count of the pairs of footsteps after the sixth or seventh entered. The men were shouting in Arabic, Jack picked up a word here and there but it was nothing he couldn't have guessed from context.

Spread out and find them.

Jack opened his eyes to find the mummy seeming to stare at him, her mouth in a comically round 'oh,' and he put a finger to her lips, silently hushing her. At least three guys passed, he could see them in the narrow space between the front and back parts of the sarcophagus, and despite the fact that neither he nor the mummy made a sound, soon enough a man edged around the other side of the sarcophagus, rifle at the ready.

He shouted something in Arabic – twice – and Jack got the message, and gave the mummy an apologetic look as he was hauled out. Farhad wasn't actually far at all, sauntering up the aisle, and Jack was shoved to his knees about four feet from the man. The terrorist stared at him contemptuously, wiping the sweat from his face before casually drawing a nine mil from the holster on his right thigh.

There were two other guys one aisle away, rifles pointed right at him, and that wasn't counting the one behind him, who was just far enough away that Jack couldn't easily get a hand on the rifle's barrel. There was nowhere to go, and no way to get a weapon. The pistol was leveled at his face, and Jack winced and closed his eyes.

Farhad said something, it was clearly a question. Probably something like "Where's your partner?' or "How do I get to the airport?" Jack didn't have the answer to either – until it called out from behind him.

"I wouldn't do that if I were you."

-M-

Mac trundled the unwieldy crate towards them, pulling back hard against the trolley bar to stop it just a few feet from where Farhad had Jack kneeling, a gun to his head. Behind Farhad, a few more men appeared, rifles at the ready, and Mac didn't waste any time.

"You've got two options, Farhad." He held up a finger. "One – leave," and he made eye contact with a few of Farhad's men, trying to judge exactly how loyal they were going to end up being. "Or two-" and he raised a second finger, then gestured to the audibly active bomb, "- we all die."

He'd set the timer for sixty seconds, and they'd already burned through twenty of them.

Farhad stared at him, stunned, for so long that Mac really thought it was going to work. Then Farhad shifted his stance, and started to laugh. He didn't lower the pistol.

"Thank you, MacGyver. You just did our job for us." His English was accented, but very good, and his tone was sincere.

That . . . was not what he'd expected.

Mac hesitated, glancing again at the men around Farhad, looking for a sign, a tell, _anything_ that would indicate they weren't all about to agree to commit suicide -

But Farhad sounded quite calm. "Our plan was always to detonate the bomb here in Cairo."

Jack, still on his knees with his hands raised, turned slowly and looked over his shoulder at Mac. His expression said it all. He knew it was a bluff. And he knew that it hadn't worked.

"All you've done is accelerated our clock."

It was almost noon. The streets were packed with protestors and citizens. If Farhad set off the bomb here, today, it would be catastrophic. Egypt was one of the most stable of the Middle Eastern countries, contaminating the capitol with radioactive fallout would compromise security across the entire region -

He knew the shock had shown on his face when Farhad smiled. "Unfortunately, you won't be alive to see the thousands of people you've killed with that bluff." A metallic click, way too close behind him, made him flinch, and Mac put up his hands automatically, doing the math. They were in the northern section of Cairo, prevailing winds were heading south from the Mediterranean Sea, the preliminary contamination area was going to be huge-

"With all the people in the streets, it'll have an even bigger impact than we could have imagined." Farhad gestured to the bomb with the pistol. "So perhaps this little uprising is good for something after all."

Mac saw his partner glance around himself, confirming that he had no play, and when Farhad brought the pistol back down to his head Mac saw him brace himself. But Farhad never looked at him, and he never fired. Instead, he locked eyes with him, and Mac let the timer count down from twelve.

When it hit zero, the bomb let out a loud, sustained beep, about three seconds, and then fell silent.

Nothing else happened.

Mac glanced down at it, eyebrows quirked. "Huh . . . I guess it was a dud."

The Bedouin behind him shuffled a few steps closer, and Mac glanced back up, into Farhad's startled brown eyes. "Or maybe Zoheir didn't feel like you paid him enough for a whole bomb."

The terrorist's face twisted, and he dealt Jack a vicious backhand, sending his partner to the floor, and out of Mac's field of vision. The pistol leveled at something near Farhad's feet, giving him a pretty good idea of where Jack had ended up.

"Then I suggest you fix it," Farhad spat. "Or you won't have a whole partner."

Mac left his hands raised and his expression mild. "Why would I do that? You're just going to kill us both anyway."

Farhad glared at him a moment more, then moved sharply, and Mac heard the strike, as well as his partner's grunt of pain. A small diameter tube of metal was shoved pointedly into his spine, and Mac stumbled forward half a step towards the crate, but didn't lower his hands.

The terrorist in front of him delivered another brutal kick, and Mac was secretly glad he couldn't actually see Jack. He was well aware the ex Delta operator knew how to take a hit, and was likely hamming it up to make them think he was hurting worse than he was, but he also knew Farhad wasn't pulling his punches. And he didn't really have a plan outside of refusing to fix the bomb.

Which was most likely going to result in a few very uncomfortable hours, followed by a bullet.

It didn't take Farhad long to decide his tactic wasn't going to work. He muttered something to one of his men, who moved in even closer to cover Jack, and then he holstered his pistol and exchanged it for his phone. He made a show of scrolling through his contacts before he selected one, and he gave Mac a quick smile and held up a finger, as if asking permission to be excused, before he turned his back on them and took a few steps away. The conversation was quiet and short, and he took the phone from his ear and hit the disconnect button very deliberately, as if it was the trigger for a bomb itself.

Nothing happened. Farhad's men didn't move. Nor did they so much as glance at one another, and Mac's stomach sank.

Not a one of them looked hesitant to die for their cause. There were at least a dozen men that he could see, and even if Farhad believed Jack was injured, Mac wasn't sure Jack could take down that many. And he sure as hell couldn't, not in a warehouse full of ceramics and gold. All he had was the bomb in front of him, which he couldn't very well set off –

Well, he couldn't allow the tanks containing the isotopes to explode, at any rate –

Mac flinched when his phone rang.

Farhad hadn't moved, still holding his mobile up in the air, back to them. "You should answer that," he advised quietly, and the phone rang again.

Haltingly, Mac pulled the phone from his pocket, well aware that the barrel of the rifle behind him was still actually touching his back. He held up the phone a little away from his body, just to make sure his guard could see it, and he glanced at the caller ID.

It wasn't Bozer, like he'd expected.

It was Nikki.

Mac swallowed down a little surge of panic, and made no move to answer it.

It rang twice more before Farhad turned, his expression triumphant. "So you do not care for her life either?" He shrugged, and made to redial his own phone.

MacGyver glared at the other man, then swiped to accept the call.

It was also a video call, and the background looked an awful lot like their van. Nikki was stuffed into the black crate they'd shipped their surveillance equipment in, gagged and handcuffed, and she glared up into the camera. Somewhere offscreen, a male voice started to chuckle, and said something in Arabic. Someone else laughed.

Mac disconnected.

It didn't change anything. He couldn't let them set off the bomb.

Farhad gave him a wide smile, and gestured broadly at the crate. "I think, for her sake, you should get started right away, MacGyver. After all, there are fates much worse than death."

He left the threat vague, but his meaning was quite clear, and Mac slowly lowered the phone back to his pocket, his mind racing. This complicated things significantly. Even if he could get himself and Jack out of this, the van was miles away. They had no hope of getting to her before the men who had her could simply drive away. If Farhad kept her, or worse, traded her back to Zoheir –

Farhad exhaled sharply, his patience clearly exhausted, and he once again drew his pistol. Mac had no illusions that he wouldn't actually use it this time.

"All right!" Mac snapped, then modulated his tone at the fury that flashed across Farhad's expression. "All right." He dug into his left pocket this time, coming up with his swiss army knife, which he held gingerly between two fingers as the rifle barrel pressed harder into his back.

Farhad gave his man a sharp nod, and the pressure vanished.

Mac glared at him another moment, then looked back down at the bomb.

Okay. He had a logic board, some ability to make sound, C4 and detonator, nitrogen-based fertilizer, and four tanks of strontium-90. Strontium-90 was a byproduct of fission reactions, and it produced a high penetration radiation and a lot of heat. Mac used the edge of the crate to pull up one of the sleeves of his linen shirt, and he placed his bared forearm almost directly over one of the tanks as he lowered his multi-tool towards the logic board.

No discernable heat. So the tanks held some kind of coolant and then an insulative gas, and the strontium-90 was likely submerged in a tube in the center. The stickers were mostly facing down, so he would be guessing what the coolant was, but the first thing that was going to come out of that tank valve would be whatever gas they were using to keep the coolant from affecting the metal exterior of the tanks.

The Egyptians – both the current society and their ancestors – were huge fans of theater. Egyptian Arabic was the most spoken form of Arabic in the world because of the popularity and power of Egyptian cinema. Like their descendants, ancient Egyptians had loved special effects. They had even created crude batteries – sometimes called Baghdad Batteries – to power smoke and steam effects on stage.

So it was only fitting, in a warehouse full of idols and apparently even an ancient Egyptian herself, to revert back to one of the literally oldest tricks in the book.

Mac carefully pried the processor off the logic board, ensuring that he broke every last pin as he did so. It was a simple component that any elementary school child could pick up for a few dollars at a Radio Shack – only Egyptians didn't have Radio Shacks, because it was a one stop shop for bomb components. He'd essentially rendered the logic board useless.

That done, Mac turned to the timer, which had its own built in processor, and set it back to its default of sixty minutes. When it beeped, Farhad approached, glancing into the crate after a cursory glare at the still-prone Jack.

"Set it for twenty minutes," he instructed, and Mac hesitated a long moment before he complied. The terrorist didn't seem to notice the missing component, and Mac then moved his hands down the red and yellow wires he'd disconnected from the tanks, miming re-attaching them.

He could hear the satisfaction in Farhad's voice. "This will give us just enough time to escape the blast radius. We will head north, to Alexandria, and let the winds carry this death throughout the whole of Egypt."

Good to know, Mac thought darkly, moving towards the valves on top of the closest tank. He frowned a little, as if struggling with something, and gave the valve a half-turn. White gas shot out of the top of the tank, with a piercing hiss and whistle, and Mac leaped back from the crate, eyes wide.

He locked eyes with Farhad, then dropped his swiss army knife and brought his hands to this throat. "S-strontium!" he gasped, then started choking, still backpeddling.

The Bedouin behind him let him, and Mac tripped over his own feet, exaggerating his wheezes even more as he fell. It took the men another few seconds to react.

Someone gave a shrill yell, in Arabic, and footsteps started thundering towards the exits. Mac collapsed fully onto his side, letting his body go limp and keeping his eyes fixed on a single point, and his guard stared at him in horror before turning tail. Farhad was screaming orders, but something cut him off, and there were two gunshots in rapid succession.

As soon as he was absolutely sure there were no eyes on him, Mac scrambled into a crouch and hurried around the side of the crate. Jack was up and had Farhad in a wrist lock, trying to force him to drop the gun. Most of his men had already shoved their way through the main door, and Mac leaned back into the crate, cranking down the valve to stop the argon gas leak.

The gun went off again before Jack managed to get the upper hand, and Mac heard a few punches land as he reclaimed his multitool and started on the chains. He pried out the joiners of the chains to the wooden sides of the crates, moving as quickly as he could, and he got two done before Jack was at his side, racking a rifle.

"Come on, dude, sooner or later they're gonna come back for their boss-"

"I know," Mac shot back, putting his weight into trying to pry the metal bracket off. "We can't take the whole bomb, but we've got to get these tanks off –"

He heard someone call out, in Arabic, but he didn't stop what he was doing until Jack tapped him forcefully on the back, twice.

"Mac, I said get your ass in there!"

The crate started moving away from him, and Mac grabbed the edge of it, then hopped up on the lip of the trolley bed as Jack started shoving it down the aisle. Jack drove the unwieldy thing about as well as anyone sprinting with a six hundred pound load could, and Mac clung to the side of the crate as Jack tried to corner it around a large black obelisk.

He heard more shouts, but he didn't pay any attention, and he finally got the fourth tank loose.

"Where am I takin' this?!"

Mac glanced up – they were nearing in the back of the warehouse, and a large set of garage doors were visible along the far wall. "There!" He wasted no time in lashing two of the tanks' chains together, and then started on the other two.

A bullet pinged by, fairly close, and Jack swore and returned fire, letting the trolley go. It bounced down the aisle, gradually losing speed, but it didn't matter. Mac shouldered one pair of tanks by its chain strap, and then hefted the second and hopped off, ducking between two stacks of crates.

He lost his footing and almost fell, bouncing off the crates, and his back reminded him that it still wasn't happy about the snake pit from the night before. Still, he managed to keep his feet, and he put his head down and ran for it. The tanks clanged against each other as they swung, he couldn't have made more noise if he'd tried, and Mac slipped to a stop at the personnel door beside the garage doors and tried the handle.

Unlocked.

He chanced a glance back into the warehouse, trying to get a bead on Jack, and two men appeared at the end of the aisle across from him. They were still forty yards away, but Mac knew he wasn't going to outrun them long with his unwieldy burden.

He heard a rifle crack that seemed to come from above, and the two men at the end of the aisle scattered.

Mac glanced back at the crate, which had come to a stop not far away, and the five hundred pounds of explosives he was leaving for them. All they really needed was a new logic board, and that was still a big enough payload to take down a large building.

Which was bad. Nothing compared to getting caught and giving them back the strontium.

But still bad.

Mac glanced at the door again, hesitating, and then he dropped the tanks as gently as he could, and headed back towards the trolley, one last time.

-M-

He had to actually start dragging the trolley away before Mac seemed to register the words, and the kid hopped on, still buried up to his armpits in the bomb. Jack shoved the thing for all the was worth, taking them as far from the front of the warehouse as possible.

Alarmed shouts had started back up – they'd finally realized it was just another bluff – and Jack squashed his annoyance with the blond who hadn't bothered to tell _him_ it was all an act and his partner hadn't actually been dying of radiation poisoning right before his eyes. Instead, he tried to catch Mac's attention as he apparently finished his current task.

"Where am I takin' this?!" Damn thing had to weigh over a quarter ton, he was really hoping Mac was permanently disarming it, or rigging it to dispose of itself and they could just leave the stupid thing. Taking it would require a truck and about six more guys to get it loaded, and he was pretty sure Farhad's men weren't gonna volunteer.

Mac pointed with his swiss army knife at the loading dock. "There!" Then he was back in the crate.

Jack opened his mouth, to point out they had literally no hope of loading that crate in the amount of time they had left, and a bullet zipped by with a crack that told him it was just a little too close. Jack gave the trolley a hard shove, sending it and Mac further down the aisle, and he turned, firing off a quick burst to get himself to some cover.

All he had was what was left in the current mag, and the one spare he'd grabbed from Farhad. Normally protecting Mac was all about laying down cover fire, meaning blowing through ammo like it was M&Ms. Right now he had at least fourteen guys to manage, which mean basically a bullet apiece.

He needed height.

Jack glanced around, and a nearly perfect stairway of crates caught his attention. He climbed it carefully, making sure it was good and steady before he put himself twenty feet above concrete, but the crates were rock solid. It wasn't quite a bird's eye view, but it was good enough.

Good enough to see that what sounded like a whole damn orchestra of cowbells was Mac, sprinting for cover with four radioactive tanks hanging off his shoulders. The kid could not have drawn more attention if he'd tried.

Jack let Mac act as his distraction and he dropped four of Farhad's goons pretty quickly, starting with the nearest and working his way back. There was no flash suppressor on the AK, nor scope, and it was a powerful old girl. The rounds could chew through a layer of wooden crate without issue, and the iron sights seemed relatively accurate, but he knew he wasn't going to manage sniping targets any further than about thirty, maybe forty yards out.

Of course, it also meant they couldn't hit him.

Jack glanced around the environment, looking for anything that could help him out. Unfortunately, not much was hanging out near the ceiling. Crates that were stacked as high as his tower were pretty damn stable, it would take way more ammo than he had to chew through and destabilize the bottom boxes. He got another pair, who were too stupid to keep out of range, and then Jack quietly slipped back down, exchanging the nearly spent mag for a fresh one and helping himself to another spare from one of the bodies he passed.

The gunfire should be keeping the majority of the guys concentrated on him, and that was just how Jack wanted it. Whatever Mac was up to, hopefully he was able to pull it off on his own. Preferably without ringing the damn dinner bells.

Things quieted down a little as the game moved back to hide and seek. Jack blew through a couple rounds for the noise, then pulled back to the neighboring aisle, and he was able to draw out two more before he had to abandon the position. He was almost back to the aisle of cats before someone finally got the drop on him.

The guy came at him with a knife, silently, and only the tough as nails nylon strap on the AK saved him from getting his chest opened up. The slash still hurt, and Jack fell back, losing the rifle when the strap gave. He brought up his forearms to block a downward strike, and the guy drove them both back into the side of the sarcophagus, which nearly tipped over. Jack didn't have the angle, and his chest screamed as he tried to use sliced muscles. The best he could do was deflect the knife to his right, where it buried itself to the hilt in the mummy, and oddly, his opponent released it and stumbled back, his eyes wide.

Jack took full advantage and popped him in the nose, then followed it with right hook. He slipped a foot behind the guy and palmed his face, body slamming him headfirst into the floor.

He relieved the unconscious grunt of his pistol and turned to recover the rifle, and when he came back up, he was face to face with the mummy.

The knife was still there, sunk into her chest, and it had cut through enough of the ancient bandages that one of her curled arms had broken free. The dried up sinews had drawn the bony thing up towards her still-bandaged face, and one impossibly long finger had settled over her mouth, in a perfect mimicry of the hushing gesture he'd used not ten minutes ago. Dangling from the wizened hand was what looked like a necklace, bearing some kind of charm. It swung back and forth like a metronome, oddly hypnotic.

As he stared, the hand continued to shift, and the bony finger was gradually drawn from her open mouth to fall further away from her, as if the weight of the medallion was pulling it down. More of the ancient linen cracked, and the hand came to a sudden stop, pointing directly at Jack.

Behind him, there was the faintest hiss of dust grinding under a boot.

Jack dropped to a knee and whirled, firing blind, and the slug caught the guy high in the chest. It wasn't until he was falling that Jack realized there was another gunman behind him, and he brought the gun over but he knew he didn't have the time, the other guy was already squeezing the trigger –

The terrorist screamed, his shot going wide, and Jack put one in his shoulder before the man fell. He didn't stop screaming, dropping his gun to grab his left leg like it was on fire, and something the size of a small tomato shook off. For a second it seemed to roll around, but then it managed to get back to its feet, and the small amber scorpion scuttled back under a crate.

Jack gaped, too shocked to move until he heard another gunshot. It came from the far side of the warehouse.

Completely unnerved, he glanced back over his shoulder, and the mummy was still pointing in the same direction.

The direction of the loading dock.

He found himself nodding. "Yes ma'am," he croaked, and then he backpedaled, tripping over a body. He kept his feet, not terribly gracefully, and then he turned and high-tailed it for the back wall.

-M-

Mac flinched as the bullet struck the crate, sending splinters flying, but he didn't stop what he was doing. Without solder, he was relying on simple surface friction to keep the wires in place; if the crate took a good jostle, the whole thing was going to come apart, but –

He mashed the last wire as hard into the board as he could, then he dropped down, just in time for a bullet to rip through the wood he'd been leaning over not a second before. He was careful not to push off from the trolley at all, scrabbling for the relatively safety of the stacked crates to his right, and frankly he had no idea how the next bullet hadn't hit him.

MacGyver grabbed the two chain straps, shouldering the tanks as he moved, and he sprinted for the back door as fast as his legs could carry him. He burst through, into the hot afternoon sun, and squinted around himself for half a second before locating a forklift. It was the closest cover, and he'd taken about three steps towards it before the sand in front of him popped and danced, in time to the rapid gunfire from his right.

Mac staggered to a stop, the tanks clanging deafeningly together, and he squinted harder, making out the Bedouin approaching on his right. The same one that had been behind him in the warehouse, with the red and white kufiya, and the same AK-47. He shouted something that Mac didn't understand, and behind him, the warehouse door was thrown open. Mac took a couple deep breaths, then he turned around to face two more of Farhad's men.

They also shouted at him, making sharp gestures with their guns. Mac considered and discarded about six ideas before he let the tanks of strontium slide off his shoulders with muffled clangs. The only thing he needed now was a phone. The strontium was far enough away from the blast center that it wouldn't be successfully vaporized. This industrial area would be contaminated, but the majority of the city would be safe.

All he needed was one of them to approach him. Get close enough to get hold of a phone.

Or just wait for Bozer to call him back.

Mac slowly put up his hands, and the two gunmen stalked towards him.

He heard tires grinding through the sand and rocks but he didn't bother to look. Reinforcements didn't mean anything at this point. They were all way too close to the building, they'd be killed by secondary blast injuries and shrapnel.

_Jack, if you're still in there, you gotta tell me, buddy._

Preferably without calling his cell.

The two men approached him more confidently, with the lion's share of their attention on the tanks rather than on him, and they were almost close enough when the Bedouin let out a startled yell. All three of them turned in time to see him bounce off the bumper of a news van, and Mac recovered himself first, lunging at the closest man and grabbing his AK. They fought over it briefly before Mac heard two shots, in rapid succession, and the man he was struggling with stiffened.

Mac let go of the rifle, and the gunman went down like a house of cards. He stared at him a second, then dragged his eyes back up to the warehouse. There were two bloody slashes across the front of Jack's black tee, but the fabric made it difficult to tell how bad. He was still upright, gun now trained back on the warehouse door, and the van ground to a stop not two feet away.

The driver was a very familiar figure, and Mac felt almost debilitating relief. He grabbed the two chain straps and hefted the tanks to the side door. He hadn't even gotten it open before another vehicle skidded into view, looping the same corner Nikki had.

"Jack!" Mac bellowed, tossing the tanks into the van before hopping in after them. The van didn't look much different than it had earlier that morning – the gear was still in place and everything, though it didn't appear to have power. He caught Nikki's eye in the rear view mirror. "You okay?"

She gave him a curt nod, letting Jack get around the front of the vehicle before applying the gas. Jack half sat, half fell into the van as it started to pick up speed, and Mac leaned over him and yanked the sliding door closed.

"Jack! Jack, you alright?"

His partner didn't respond.

Mac grabbed what the older agent often referred to as the 'oh shit' handle as Nikki fishtailed them around the far corner of the warehouse, back towards the street, and Jack slid gracelessly into the door. It didn't really seem to register to him, and Mac didn't like the stunned quality in his eyes one bit.

"Jack –"

Two fingers on his carotid found a fast but strong pulse, and Jack finally responded, pulling away a little and making some effort to brace himself against the door. He hadn't lost the shellshocked look, but he did finally blink and focus on him.

"I'm . . . fine," he said, but it sounded unsure, and Mac patted him down for the bullet wound he'd obviously missed. He didn't find one. The slash to his chest was going to need stitches, but where it should have been deepest there was no wound at all, his shirt was still intact. Belatedly Mac remembered that Jack had gotten hold of a rifle, it must have been the strap that saved him -

Confident that Jack wasn't going to bleed out in the back of the van, Mac fought his way to the front, where Nikki had just guided them back onto the main road. She'd passed several vehicles, and a quick glance at the side mirrors showed them coming back around quickly.

If they weren't Farhad's men, they were Zoheir's.

"Nikki, gimme your phone." If he thought about it, he'd lose his nerve. It was now or never.

She gave him a startled look, then glanced at the console, and he saw it poking up from the cupholders. "It's not encrypted, I lost the power supply-"

He grabbed it, entering the op's passcode to unlock it, and dialed his own phone number.

"Hang onto the wheel," he instructed grimly, eyes on the side mirrors.

It took longer than he would have thought for the call to connect. Without her hardware there in the middle, he figured it would be three seconds, to-

Mac saw the explosion a split second before he heard it, and the van skewed wildly to the side as the concussion caught them. Nikki yelped and let off the accelerator, trying desperately to keep them from tipping, and Mac grabbed the wheel as she nearly overcorrected. The van rocked onto two wheels, then swung to the opposite two before settling back onto all four with a terrific squeal, and the two of them got it leveled off and stable.

There was no sign of the two vehicles that had been pursuing them in the newly-cracked mirror.

His knees went funny, and Mac slithered to the floor of the van as Nikki gunned it.

"Mac, what-"

He dropped the phone – the call had auto disconnected – and rested his head against the side of the driver's seat, swallowing hard.

"I'm think I'm gonna be sick."

-M-

Twenty minutes of textbook defensive driving found them at a truck stop, nestled between two semis and invisible from the road. Despite his stomach's best efforts, Mac had in fact managed to keep his breakfast down, and he was putting the finishing touches on some improvised bandaging while Nikki was rifling through Jack's duffel for a clean shirt.

Or at least a cleaner one.

Jack grimaced a little when Mac pulled the wrap tight, and Mac winced in sympathy as he tied it off. "Sorry, big guy. How you doing?"

His partner took an experimental breath. "It's good," was all he said, and then reached out woodenly to accept the maroon shirt Nikki held out. He slipped it over his head, slowly, and Mac gave him another worried look before he turned his attention to Nikki. It had been invisible from his position before, but now that she was facing him, an angry red cut on the left corner of her mouth was starting to swell up, and he reached out and ran his thumb across it, very gently.

Her teeth and jaw felt fine, perfectly intact, and Nikki gave him a half smile and caught his hand with her own, leaning into his palm. "I'll live," she assured him.

Half an hour ago, he wouldn't have put money on it. "You're okay?"

She nodded gently into his hand. "All that practice with floor work really paid off."

Mac cast his mind back to her combat training. She was still working through the basics. Floor work had been about a month ago, all he'd really shown her was –

Was about five ways to kick a standing opponent in the balls.

Mac couldn't help a little smirk. "Told you that's all it'd take."

Her grin was still lopsided, but more genuine. "I actually already knew that." She finally pulled her face away from his hand, still holding it in her own, and glanced at the gap under the table where the power supply used to be. "Took me too long to get out of the handcuffs, so they got the power supply. Without it, I can't power the rigs."

Which meant no more encrypted communication. Her and Jack's mobiles were sitting on the table in pieces with their batteries removed, which meant Zoheir's techs could no longer use them to track them, but given how quickly he was able to deploy dirty cops to get to Nikki, they had to assume the majority of the Cairo police force was under his influence. And would be looking for the van.

They'd need a new set of wheels to get to exfil. And they had another six hours before the plane would be there, leaving them dangerously exposed.

"Hey." She squeezed his hand, gently. "I'm sorry."

Mac blinked, bringing himself back to the present, and gave her an inquiring look. "For what?"

"I . . . know how hard that must have been."

Just the thought of it made his gut roil, and Mac closed his eyes and took a deep breath. One hundred thousand square feet of Egyptian history – and a country that had had much of that history ransacked by the Europeans, and later, the Americans – and he had blown it all sky high. Not to mention the people that could have still been inside that warehouse, if any of them had still been alive –

"Hey." She patted his hand. "You couldn't leave that bomb for Farhad or Zoheir. You saved a lot of living Egyptians. That's worth way more, right?"

Mac opened his eyes, letting his gaze wander to the four tanks of strontium-90, sitting innocently in the black packing crate, to keep them from rolling around the van.

"We haven't saved them yet," he murmured. The mission had three parts, and so far they'd only completed one.

Farhad and Zoheir were still loose, and if he wasn't very much mistaken, still in Cairo. For both of them, losing the bomb and the isotope was nothing more than a setback. Zoheir would continue selling weapons, and if Farhad had survived the warehouse explosion, he would eventually find a way to buy or build his bomb. Unless they got all three, this would just repeat on some other day, in some other country.

They had no backup, no coms, no phones, very little tech, and whatever ammunition Jack still had on him. They were up against a metro police department and whatever was left of Farhad's army.

Whatever was troubling his partner, apparently his tone managed to cut through it, because Jack followed his gaze to the crate.

"What're you thinkin', Mac?" It was cautious.

He pushed himself to his feet, heading to the front of the van to pull out a map. "I'm thinking we have six hours to find and arrest Zoheir and Farhad. We need to get moving."

-M-

In hindsight, they should have bought a burner phone.

Behind him, he heard a quite sigh. "Well, good news, I've got enough wifi to tell you we're on the least congested route."

Mac craned his head around to see that Nikki had broken out her laptop, and was watching a traffic map. "Jack, you can take a right in three blocks, and that'll get us around the detour and into a less populated area."

He was pretty sure downtown Beijing was technically a less populated area than the one they were in now.

The silver Hyundai Verna that they had appropriated from the truck stop was one of at least three that Mac could see, so their plan of blending into the traffic to keep the Egyptian police off their trail would be working beautifully, if they were actually driving it instead of just sitting in it, and they weren't completely surrounded by crowds. Not only had most traffic in Cairo been detoured to the few main thoroughfares the Egyptian police and apparently military could secure, but it seemed a great deal of the foot traffic had been as well.

Every attempt to find a less direct route around the city had failed. They were exactly where he didn't want to be.

A cop was directing traffic, eyeing the cars, and Jack intentionally put a tan Audi between their license plate and the man as they passed through the intersection. His eyes were constantly on the mirrors, but you really had to know him to see it; otherwise, he looked like any other mildly annoyed American stuck in traffic, with his arm in the window, idly toying with his sunglasses.

And partially hiding his face from CCTV cameras.

Mac had opted for a ball cap, figuring his hair would be a dead giveaway, and Nikki had sacrificed her silk blouse to make a headscarf. Blond hair wasn't common in Egypt, and their pale skin already made them stand out enough. They were getting curious looks from pedestrians, but no more than any other American or European tourists they'd seen, and they had finally made it to the northwestern side of the city.

In less than two miles, they'd be out of the urban areas proper, and ten miles after that, it would be smooth sailing towards Alexandria.

Which meant it would be time to turn Jack's cellphone back on, send an SOS via text, and let Zoheir get a location on them.

Their odds of capturing Zoheir or Farhad in Cairo and actually hanging onto them were quite low. Both men would have a substantial advantage in men and resources. Mac wanted to put off the actual arrest until just a short while before exfil arrived, where the copilot at least would be able to give them a little support, and they'd have resources – pharmaceutical and otherwise – to keep them quiet long enough to get them back to DXS.

Once Zoheir got their fake SMS, he'd be suspicious, but he seemed like the kind of weapons dealer who held a grudge. And Farhad needed his strontium in the next few days if he wanted to take advantage of the protests. Mac was pretty sure they were attractive enough bait.

They just needed to get the hell out of Cairo.

Jack managed to creep forward another half block before traffic stopped him once again, and Mac watched him in his peripheral vision. Even in the late afternoon sun, he looked pale, and his skin was dry. Some of that was from the knife wounds, he was sure, and that was another reason Mac couldn't wait to get them to exfil. He knew his partner was in pain.

But there was something else. Something he wasn't willing to talk about, at least not in front of Nikki. Something had happened in that warehouse, and it had really shaken him.

Mac glanced over at him, trying to figure out a way to broach the subject without Nikki deciphering what they were talking about, and across the concrete barrier, a man in the back of a car heading in the opposite direction glanced over at the same moment.

And damned if it wasn't Chelem Farhad.

They stared at one another for a second, totally surprised, and Mac managed to open his mouth.

"Jack . . ."

Farhad, meanwhile, was silently screaming at his driver, and had picked up a gun.

" _Jack!_ "

His partner followed his gaze, and seemed to snap back to the present. He threw the car in reverse, ramming it back into the car behind him as Farhad opened fire. Mac ducked, checking the back seat to make sure Nikki had followed suit, and Jack spun the wheel expertly, pointing the car towards the gap between the bumpers on their right as the windshield and side windows shattered. He managed to get the 1.6 liter engine to force its way between the two other cars, shoving them aside just enough, and Jack hopped the curb to the sidewalk at about fifteen miles an hour.

Fortunately the gunshots had attracted the attention of the pedestrians, and Jack got through them as quickly as he could, keeping as close to the street as possible to put their car between the civilians and Farhad's bullets. He took the side mirror off on a lamp post, and swerved to the right, taking them past a concrete barricade onto a street that had been cleared from vehicular use.

It was still full of pedestrians, and Jack laid on the horn, cutting through as quickly as he could. Mac's side view mirror was still intact, and he watched the street behind them for any sign of pursuit. They made it a block before the car stalled, and Jack let go of the wheel for a second, staring at the instrument panel in confusion.

"Crap, they must've hit something-"

Mac rolled down his window, sticking his head as far out as he could, and sure enough, there was a trail of liquid along the pavement behind them. It wasn't colored, and it had the consistency of water, which meant –

"They hit the fuel line," he announced grimly, and his eyes followed it back down the street to the concrete barrier. On the other side of it a figure appeared, holding what looked a whole lot like a rocket launcher.

It wouldn't do the job of a six hundred pound fertilizer bomb, but it sure as hell would disperse enough of the strontium to kill everyone in a five block radius.

"RPG!" he shouted, throwing open his door before he reached into the back and yanked the blanket off the strontium tanks, grabbing the first chain he could get ahold of. Nikki snagged the other, and they both dove out of the car. Jack had stepped out as well, trying to lay down cover fire, but there were simply too many people in the way.

And Farhad's man didn't care how many of them he killed.

Mac saw the rocket launch, but he was pulled up short by the second strontium tank, which was wedged between the driver and passenger seats. Mac yanked as hard as he could and the tank squeezed through, but it had slowed him enough that he didn't even make it to the edge of the sidewalk before the grenade impacted the Hyundai.

He felt the heat and the disorientation of being thrown, and Mac did his best to curl up and relax at the same time. He never let go of the chain, even when his right shoulder and his head found cement. He felt himself tumble a couple times before he threw out his arms to bring himself to a stop, and Mac blinked repeatedly, willing himself to remain conscious.

There was nothing but silence and a high-pitched buzz that was all too familiar, and Mac struggled to sit up. He'd been thrown into the doorway of a shop, and he still had the two tanks. One of them was spinning slightly as it jettisoned white gas.

Mac watched it a moment, unsure why that bothered him so much, and he brought a hand to his head. There was something stuck to it, he managed to peel it off and couldn't figure out why half a bloody ball cap was in his hand. Someone jumped into the doorway with him, shouting, and then raised and fired a gun. He barely heard it, but the muffled sound brought old memories to the surface, and more adrenaline dumped into his blood.

Mac took a deep breath, then tugged the leaking tank closer, off the sidewalk, so it wouldn't get hit again. Jack reached out for the chain and Mac let him take it, trying to pull himself up the brick wall to his feet. He heard the gun again, then someone grabbed him by his left arm and dragged him bodily into the shop.

The darker interior was soothing to his pounding skull, but there was no time to enjoy it. He could barely keep his feet under him as that hand inexorably hauled him forward, and it was only when they'd exploded back out into bright sunlight that Mac finally felt steady enough to shrug off Jack's hand.

They were in a narrow alley behind the line of shops, and he glanced down it just in time to see Nikki appear around the corner. She hesitated, then ran towards them, with the other two tanks of strontium. She'd chosen to tuck them under her arms, football style, but he could have sworn he could hear them clanging together.

It was an alarm, then, or a siren. It didn't matter.

All he had eyes for was the tank on Jack's back, that was no longer emitting gas.

Mac reached out and took it, sliding the chain off Jack's shoulder as he did so, and he dropped the tanks to the ground, tilting up the hole towards sunlight. It was a complete puncture, likely shrapnel from the grenade, and he had no idea whether or not the core of the tank had been breached. Liquid nitrogen wasn't pouring out, which was good, but he could already feel the chill coming through the walls of the tank, and that was definitely bad.

If it was just a crack, the liquid nitrogen might have already frozen water vapor and stopped a liquid leak. But it didn't mean radiation wasn't bleeding through. And the presence of hot, humid air would make that crack a whole lot worse, a whole lot faster.

Mac cast around, finally starting to pick out voices. Jack was shouting at him, asking a question. It was going to have to wait. He needed –

He needed something malleable and sticky, capable of making an airtight seal, to stuff in or cover the hole and slow down the exchange of outside air with the core of the tank.

Mac immediately rotated the tank so the puncture was pointing away from all of them, knowing if the core was cracked the radiation would be directional. That done, he cast around the alley. Almost unbelievably, there wasn't a dumpster or trash can in sight. It was clearly a place people would come to smoke, there were a few cigarette butts here and there –

And a piece of green chewing gum, stuck to the outside of the doorframe.

Without hesitation he pried it free and popped it into his mouth. Whatever Jack was saying, the disgust on his face was clear enough, and Mac chewed it quickly, pulling a piece of the wooden doorframe free as well. As soon as the gum was soft enough, Mac spat it into his hand and pressed it onto the flat end of the stick of wood. Then he used the wood to carefully roll the wad of gum onto the tank and the hole, mashing down the edges as well as he could.

"-thing leakin' radiation?!"

"I don't know," Mac answered the question he thought had been asked, leaning back up and fighting a sudden wave of lightheadedness. "Point it – not at people."

"We gotta go," Nikki called, in a tone that made him think she had said it repeatedly, and Mac reached out to take the tank. Jack beat him to it, wrapping the chain around the back of his neck so the tanks hung in front of him. He put the damaged one under his left arm, pointing the gum a little to the left rather than directly in front of him, and let the other one dangle where it wouldn't interfere with his shooting hand.

The front of his maroon shirt was stained, though whether from blood or sweat, Mac couldn't tell.

Jack said something to Nikki that Mac couldn't quite catch, and she nodded and took off, back the way she'd come. Jack glanced at him and Mac answered by breaking into a jog and following Nikki. His hearing was getting better by the second, it was good enough to make out the gunfire that greeted Nikki as she sprinted across the street, and Jack's return fire covering them as he followed.

She'd been the last one of them looking at a map, and she ran like she had a destination in mind.

She kept them to the narrow shop alleys as much as she could, out of the main roads to avoid people and force Farhad's men to go it on foot. Once the shops ended, however, it became the back alleys behind residences, and they dodged around clothing lines and plastic chairs. When they came out on the next street, Mac saw that she'd taken them to an area that was under development. Fewer people, fewer cameras.

He looked up and down the street. Condos were being built, which would give them ample places to hide, and –

And a hotel, in the final stages of construction, not two hundred yards away.

A concrete pool and seven feet of water would do a lot to keep any leaks from the strontium-90 contained.

"Over here."

Unfortunately for them, this street was open to vehicular traffic, and Mac wasn't sure if the tire screeching he heard meant they had been pursued, or that Jack had almost gotten hit. There were actual construction workers in the hotel lobby as he bolted through, but not as many as he'd initially feared, and Mac and Nikki popped out of the back into the landscaped garden area, where teams were pouring the concrete for the large, lagoon-shaped pool.

That wasn't finished, and didn't contain any water.

. . . though it _could_ contain something a lot better . . .

Jack finally joined them, a little out of breath and taking special care to keep his left side pointed anywhere but at them. Mac gestured for Jack to hand off the tanks to Nikki.

"Deepest end, get 'em in there, keep the hole pointed away from you," he instructed her, and then he patted Jack's shoulder and started for the concrete mixer at a run.

The mixer was industrial size, and the angle of the tank said it was nearly full. It was also being manned by a six guy crew, all of whom began shouting in alarm as he approached. Mac didn't even try to reassure them. He just fished his swiss army knife out of his pocket and selected the cigar cutter, then threw open the maintenance cover on the back of the truck, trying to locate the hydraulic hose that controlled the tilt of the cement tank.

Someone put a hand on his right shoulder and a surprising amount of pain shot down his arm, almost making him drop the tool. The pressure was gone instantly – Jack – and Mac yanked a series of thick black hoses into better view. Truck suspension, tank rotation –

Tank cant.

He put the cigar cutters as far around the hose as they could get, angled the hose away, and squeezed. The tool cut through the rubber easily. Hot hydraulic fluid shot out in a high-pressure spray into the bowels of the tank engine, but he knew it didn't matter. He ran to the end of the mixer and grabbed the chute, noticing the crew had all backed off – Jack – and slurry began pouring down the chute as the mixer slowly began to tip.

Mac shoved the chute as far towards the deep end of the pool as he could get it before he backed off. The slurry began spilling faster than the chute could move it, but all the cement was still making it into the pool, and he watched with satisfaction as the liquid cement rolled over like an ocean wave in slow motion, engulfing the four tanks of strontium-90.

As soon as they were completely submerged, and he could tell that they'd be buried at least four feet in cement, Mac looked up to find Jack putting his hands in the air. Across the pool from him, Nikki was doing the same. Four or five men with assault rifles and very familiar uniforms were pouring into the garden, and Mac followed suit as a member of the Egyptian police circled the slowly filling pool, rifle trained on him.

-M-

MacGyver didn't remember much of the ride to the precinct. The interior of the military-style transport was dark, like the transports he used to take in Afghanistan, and two of the officers rode in the back with them, on opposite ends, so there was no point in picking or breaking the handcuffs. He used the time to rest, eyes closed against a throbbing headache, and he knew he was probably worrying Jack and Nikki both but he didn't have the energy to reassure them. They were just as likely to be taken to one of Zoheir's properties as an actual police station, and either way they were in deep shit.

Zoheir would have to wait until the concrete set to excavate the strontium, but hopefully he'd take a Geiger counter with him when he did it, and realize how bad of an idea that was going to be.

The transport trundled over something large with a deep metallic clang – probably traffic spikes – and slowed, making a series of turns before shuddering to a stop, then backing up. They bounced off something that had a little give, then the motor turned off, and the officers pulled open the doors to reveal what looked like a loading dock. Everything was in Arabic, but it was all labeled, and when his handcuffs were released from the bar beneath his seat MacGyver got to his feet obediently and was guided out into a much cooler space.

A fleet of police cars were parked in neat rows behind them, but Mac couldn't quite locate the exit of the underground parking structure before he was hauled through a set of secure double doors. They were led around a few corners, past a room full of shouting people he assumed was central processing, and Mac's stomach sank when the next turn led to a heavy, locked door. It was opened by a swarthy gentleman who looked at him as if Mac had been personally responsible for getting his birthday cancelled, and then he was led beyond that, into a room full of very small, barred cells.

They were each given their own, which contained nothing more than bars for walls and a hole in the floor. A fourth man entered, handing off a clipboard to the swarthy guard, and spoke in English.

"Do you have any weapons?"

They'd been patted down before they'd been loaded into the transport, and his swiss army knife and passport had already been confiscated, so Mac just shook his head. The officer came in and patted him down anyway, very thoroughly. He wasn't gentle, finding injuries from the blast that Mac hadn't actually noticed earlier, and he couldn't help a grunt of pain when the man encountered the road rash on his right shoulder.

"Hey asshole-"

Mac shook his head sharply at Jack, who was in the neighboring cell, as the officer stopped and gave his partner a deadly look. Jack returned it three fold, though he said nothing else, and the guard gave him another glare before he continued his brusque examination. The cop grabbed his jaw and wrenched his head to the left, apparently getting a look at the back of his skull, and then muttered something in Arabic and shoved him back, away from the door.

He withdrew from the cell, leaving him in the handcuffs, and the door slid shut with a bang.

Directly across from him, Nikki flashed him a lopsided little smile, and then her eyes shifted to the officer, who looked her up and down.

"You lay a hand on her, you'll never get it back."

Even if not every man there spoke English, the tone of Jack's voice alone was enough to attract the attention of everyone in the room. The swarthy guard at the door actually put a hand to his holstered pistol.

The officer snorted, unhurriedly giving her another head to toe visual examination, and then he turned back to them, this time facing Jack.

"We have sent for a female officer." It was dismissive. "Step back."

Jack was standing right up against the bars, using his three extra inches of height and sheer fury to block the door. When he didn't move back, Mac shuffled his feet, trying to draw their attention.

"Ethan," he warned. If these cops weren't completely under Zoheir's thumb, they could use a friend, and frankly cooperation couldn't really hurt them at this point. "They're just doing their jobs."

The officer wasn't willing to wait. He pulled his sidearm. "Step back," he repeated, in the same even tone, and two other officers in the room followed his lead.

Mac glared daggers at Jack, and he grudgingly capitulated, allowing the officer into the cell. The Egyptian put his pistol back in its holster, though his two colleagues advanced towards the cell as backup, and then he started patting Jack down, without any trace of trepidation.

He was just as thorough with Jack, and no more gentle, and Mac was a little surprised when he paused, then reached into Jack's back pocket. Surely they'd already found his passport –

He withdrew something on a string, but Mac couldn't see what it was. The officer held it in his hand a moment, studying it, and then came back around to Jack's front, and held it up. It looked like some kind of medallion on a leather cord.

"Where did you acquire this?"

If he hadn't been standing right next to him, Mac would have sworn that someone had just shot Jack in the gut. The protective fury he'd been projecting evaporated. He actually took a step back, almost shrinking from it, and his wide eyes slid away from the medallion like he couldn't bear to even look at it.

"I said, where did you get this?" The officer seemed to be enjoying Jack's obvious discomfort, studying the medallion in his hand. "This is a burial charm. It's worth hundreds of thousands of pounds. Sale of these types of artifacts is strictly controlled, and you would have been issued a receipt for Customs." He looked back up at Jack.

"Where is it?"

Mac did his level best to keep his expression neutral. It was much harder than it should have been.

Surely Jack hadn't –

Is that why he was acting so strange? Guilt? He was looking at that medallion the same way he'd looked at the cobra last night.

Jack didn't say a word, and Mac watched the muscles shift along his jaw.

"We'll just have to add smuggling to your charges," the officer concluded, palming the medallion. He withdrew from the cell, his colleagues still with weapons trained on Jack, and the cell door banged closed.

The female officer arrived, and while her headscarf was confiscated, Nikki was handled with a bit more care, and declared clean of any contraband. The officers withdrew, murmuring in Arabic, and after a few moments in conference, filed out of the door. It closed with a heavy thud, and then the lock clunked.

At least they'd have a little warning before anyone came back in.

Mac glanced at the corners of the room, not spotting any cameras – which was both good and bad - and then stepped over to the bars, as close to Jack as he could get. "What the hell was that?" he whispered.

Jack shook his head emphatically, his lips pressed together.

"Jack . . ."

When his partner finally turned to look at him, Mac couldn't decipher his expression. It was a cross between guilt – and there was plenty of it – and apprehension. Almost fear.

Mac closed his eyes and took a deep, slow breath. "Tell me you didn't take that from the warehouse." All the times Jack had joked about 'hazard pay,' Mac had never taken him seriously. Jack was one of the most upstanding guys he knew -

"I didn't!" Jack's voice was no louder. "I swear to you, I didn't touch the damn thing! I-"

But then Jack broke off with a shake of his head, and paced restlessly to the other end of the cell.

And that wasn't good enough. "Then how exactly did it get into your back pocket?"

"I don't know!" It was hissed. "Last time I saw it, it was hangin' in her hand-"

Mac sharpened his look. "Whose hand?"

But Jack shook his head again. "Uh-uh. Nope."

" _Jack_!"

"Look, dude, you wouldn't believe me even if I told you!" Jack came back to the bars, and there was open apology in his eyes. "If I say it out loud, then . . . " He broke off with a little whimper, then squeezed his eyes shut and continued shaking his head.

Mac stared at him incredulously. He'd seen his partner scared before. Sitting on top of a bomb hadn't been Jack's favorite moment. He wasn't all that eager to get shot in the face, either, mostly because he believed he'd somehow survive it and it would hurt a lot. In fact, the only things that really scared Jack Dalton were the threat of a painful death – which was still a very real possibility – and -

And things that didn't actually exist.

Mac closed his eyes and groaned.

Nikki apparently couldn't hear the entire conversation, and was tired of being left out. "What?" she whispered urgently.

Mac opened his eyes, meeting her blue ones between the bars. "Curse of the Pharaoh," he said simply.

Beside him, Jack made a loud shushing noise, and Nikki's disbelieving look moved from Mac to Jack.

"Are you kidding me?!"

Jack shook his handcuffed hands at her. "Don't talk about it! If it doesn't think we believe-"

"We don't," Mac broke in, almost forgetting to whisper.

"-and then you had to go and blow her up!" Jack turned the raised hands on him. "Like I hadn't pissed her off enough!"

Mac felt his eyebrows raise. "Wait . . . so you're saying this is _my_ fault?! That _I_ stuffed a priceless relic down your pants?!"

Jack let out a frustrated cry, pressing the heels of his palms to his eyes. "I don't know what I'm sayin', man, I just don't want my face to melt off-"

There was noise outside the main door, a key slipping into the lock. "Pretty sure they're just gonna shoot us," Mac muttered, stepping back towards the middle of his cell as the door was pushed open.

The officer that had frisked them walked in, accompanied by a man who was Jack's equal in height and presence. He was out of uniform; he'd ditched the navy canvas shirt for a black tee, and tattoos covered his upper arms in sophisticated rings. He was wearing a black canvas holster on his thigh, rather than leather, which told Mac he was part of a tactical team.

So not bullets. Broken necks instead.

Jack had dropped his hands and attempted to put his game face back on, and the tac officer spared him a second look before he relieved the other officer of the clipboard. He said something in Arabic. It sounded offhand, not at all angry, and the officer looked at him quizzically, and asked him something.

The tac officer didn't repeat it, and after a moment his colleague gave him a formal nod, then left the room, pulling the door closed behind him. The lock clunked again, and for a long moment, the room of cells was perfectly silent.

Eventually the tac officer flipped over the first page of the clipboard, apparently actually reading it, and Mac relaxed enough to take a step closer to the bars. When the Egyptian finally spoke, his English was impeccable.

"We have no record of you entering Egypt."

Mac glanced at Jack, trying to catch his attention, but his partner hadn't taken his eyes off the Egyptian, so he cleared his throat.

"I don't know what to tell you. Reuters handled that. There were a lot of us, and gear –"

"Yes, your van was found abandoned at a truck stop about fifteen kilometers from the site of an explosion, earlier today." The second piece of paper was flipped. "Did Reuters also arrange for you to steal alternate transportation?"

Cameras at the truck stop.

Mac fell silent.

"You passed through a toll booth on Route 50 around four o'clock this morning. Where were you coming from?"

When no one answered him, he looked up. His eyes were dark and smoky, rimmed with what looked like eyeliner. His gaze was oddly intent.

"I ask because there was a warehouse fire in Sharm El-Sheikh last night, and a van with a description matching yours was spotted fleeing the scene."

Mac met his eyes, saying nothing.

"Once your new, stolen vehicle was spotted by the local police at a detour, you burned it to destroy evidence, and then you were seen carrying tanks bearing hazard and radiation labels through the streets of Cairo, where you set off a radiation detector on Ard Al Lewa."

That answered the question of whether the tank of strontium had been cracked. Both he and Jack might have been exposed, potentially dangerously so-

The Egyptian dropped his eyes back to the clipboard. "With the police closing in on you, you then trespassed onto private property and assaulted laborers in an attempt to hide the remaining evidence." He then flipped the pieces of paper back, sharply, and tucked the clipboard under his arm. His expression hadn't really changed.

"You should know, we treat foreign terrorists as harshly as we do our own people. Do you have anything you would like to say?"

That was the story they were going to hand the US State Department, to justify detaining them under their covers as journalists. Mac had no doubt that the next step in this process would be them 'attempting to break out,' and the tac officer having no choice but to respond with deadly force. Without the strontium, they had nothing Zoheir wanted.

He held the man's gaze, still saying nothing, and the Egyptian gave him the slightest smile. Then he reached into his pocket, and withdrew something that crinkled slightly.

It was a plastic evidence bag, and there in the bottom was the medallion.

The tac officer strode forward, unhurriedly, until he was standing in front of Jack's cell. The same dark eyes came up to Jack's, but this time, his partner didn't flinch away from the charm. He didn't really pay it much attention at all. His posture was wary but not aggressive, and Mac couldn't pin down his expression.

"Who gave this to you?"

Jack stared him down.

The Egyptian let him, turning the evidence bag over in his hands. "It is a museum quality piece. I have never seen one in such pristine condition. Was it a gift?"

"I wouldn't call it that," Jack replied evenly.

The man glanced back up at his partner, and Mac didn't let his expression change. He trusted Jack, he did, but hoping he could outspook this guy with superstition was probably not a great plan –

"So you took it."

Jack gave him a long look. "Wouldn't say that either."

The Egyptian cocked his head to the side. "You are soon to die, American. Why not simply tell me how it came to be in your possession?"

Strangely, Jack gave him a broad grin. "Yeah, okay. You're right. That was us in Sharm. Your buddy Zoheir was holding an auction for a dirty bomb."

Across from him, in her cell, Nikki widened her eyes slightly, and Mac gave her a very subtle shake of his head.

"Oh?" The man's voice was oddly soft. "And you have proof of this?"

The crow's feet around his eyes deepened as Jack thought, and then he actually leaned to the side, making eye contact with Nikki.

She stared at him like he'd grown a third head, and the Egyptian turned, following Jack's gaze. Nikki glanced between the two of them uncertainly. "On my laptop," she managed.

Neither confirming nor denying that she still actually had the intelligence. Letting Jack decide how he wanted to play it. And of course, he'd say they still had it, and offer Zoheir the same trade they'd offered in the snake pit.

Then again, it hadn't been that successful the first time around -

"That the buyer, Chelem Farhad, just blew up with an RPG," Jack added darkly.

It took every bit of Mac's self-restraint not to react when he heard Jack say it, so cavalierly. Sure, it wasn't a great card, but it was _literally_ the only one they had –

"That's unfortunate," the Egyptian observed, in his smooth voice.

"Nah." Jack didn't sound concerned. "Not like you'd be allowed to actually use it, even if we still had it. He's got his claws in deep, or you'd'a pried him loose a while back."

And Mac finally realized what the look on Jack's face was. Recognition. He recognized the man – or something about him, maybe his military affiliation, maybe something else. And he respected him. But Jack also wasn't truly sure this guy was actually on their side.

Jack didn't usually take on this role in their little team, and Mac decided to let it play out.

"Rest of the evidence is sittin' in five feet of cement in that pool. Best we could do on short notice."

The tac officer glanced back down at the medallion. "And this?"

Jack didn't even hesitate. "A mummy gave it to me."

Mac coughed. Hard. "He, uh, he got a little knocked around by the RPG, I think what he means is –"

"A mummy," the Egyptian repeated flatly, his eyes sliding back to Jack without blinking.

Jack nodded. "Yep."

The tac officer studied Jack for another long moment. "So you admit to being American agents. You accuse a powerful Egyptian citizen of domestic terrorism, yet you have no proof. You destroyed valuable properties in two different cities in under two days, including one that housed priceless Egyptian artifacts and history. You brought components to make a dirty bomb into Cairo, started a gunfight that caused mass panic, and exposed yourselves and others to potentially lethal doses of radiation."

And then he held up the baggie. "You admit to all of this, and yet you tell me that a mummy gave this to you."

Mac almost held his breath.

"Well, I mean, she held it out, but I didn't take it," Jack corrected. "Dunno how it ended up in my pocket. And we didn't start that gunfight," he added, almost as an afterthought.

The officer gave Jack another long look. It was difficult to tell what he was thinking, but he tucked the evidence bag back into his pocket, and then turned without another word and walked to the door. He rapped, twice, and the lock clunked. Without looking at any of them, or saying anything else, he pulled open the door. In another second it had closed behind him, and then they were alone.

Mac rounded on his partner. "Jack, are you _kidding me?!_ A _mummy_ gave it to me?!"

Jack shrugged, looking almost surprised that Mac was angry. "Yeah, it's cool, dude. He gets it."

Mac wanted to pull his hair out. If his head didn't hurt so badly, he might have given it a shot. "Jack!"

"Nah, man, remember how I told you me and the boys, we found those tombs out in the desert?" He wasn't whispering, and he nodded to Nikki, drawing her into the conversation. "We were there tryin' to infiltrate an enemy supply line. We came up out of those catacombs ass backwards, right up in the middle of a patrol. These two guys popped outta the sand like Terrians and helped us out. Once we established who we were, they gave us rock solid intel and we took the supply line that night. Those two disappeared back into the tombs, never even saw 'em leave. They had the same ink."

Jack tapped his right arm.

"We figured they were some kinda freedom fighters. Not fans of the Iraqi government, anyway. That's why I laugh every time we're watching The Mummy, and the magi pops up-"

"Medjai," Mac corrected reflexively.

"Trust me, Mac. That guy's on our side."

"Yeah, until you went off into Crazytown on him," Mac growled, heaving a sigh and putting his back against the bars. He flinched away when one of them pressed against his right shoulder a little too hard, then he eased himself over an inch to the right, which was a little more tolerable. "Ally or not, we just told him we've got nothing to offer."

Something tickled his hair, and Mac pulled his head away from the bars sharply. Behind him, Jack tsked.

"Looks like you're still bleedin' a little back here, bud-"

He shook his head in irritation, then leaned it back against the bars. "It's just an abrasion. It'll stop."

Less than ten minutes passed before the lock rattled again, and Mac leaned off the cool bars warily as the clipboard officer re-entered, along with his two colleagues.

Their demeanor had taken a one hundred and eighty degree turn. They were bearing evidence bags containing their passports and confiscated items – his swiss army knife, Nikki's headscarf, even Jack's pistol. They said very little, merely opening the cells and handing the bags over, and then one of them held out the smaller evidence bag, with the medallion, offering it to Jack.

Almost reverently.

Jack drew up his hands, still handcuffed, to his chest. "Uh-uh. That should . . . uh, stay here-"

The officer stared at him, either because he didn't understand English, or he didn't understand Jack's reaction.

Mac plastered on a smile. "Jack, take the bag," he growled through his teeth.

"Really don't think I should-"

When Jack took a step back, Mac widened his smile and stepped out of his cell. "Thank you," he said slowly, accepting the bag from the officer. He glanced between the two of them, clearly still not understanding, and Mac could empathize.

"I'll just carry this for him."

The officer gave a hesitant nod, still puzzled, and then started unlocking their handcuffs.

Once uncuffed, they were guided back out the way they had come. The central processing office was still a zoo, and Mac wondered how many of those Egyptians were the ones who had been shot at, or had a car careen past them on a sidewalk, or had their shop windows destroyed by a car exploding.

He also looked for any sign that they were simply being transferred from the precinct directly to Zoheir's custody.

The secured double doors opened into the parking garage, and there was no Audi, no men with rifles. No smirking arms dealer. Instead, there was a Hyundai Verna, white this time, sitting by the receiving dock. The tac officer was leaning casually against it.

Still wary, Mac followed Jack down the stairs, keeping himself between the tactical officer and Nikki. The man's smoky eyes flicked to him, and the small, amused smile reappeared.

Very much like the looks he used to get from Jack's old unit.

"Your agency, they will continue their interest in certain activities here?"

This time, Mac decided to take the lead. "Yes." While Nikki's laptop might have been a total loss, the actual intelligence still in their brains would be more than enough to justify raids on Zoheir's properties in Cairo and Sharm. As for Farhad, Mac had no doubt he was still legitimately on the CIA's radar.

"I hold you to that." The Egyptian leaned off the car. "You may take it where you will, but leave it inside the border. Do not return."

Nikki came up to his side, eyeing the vehicle. "To . . . Cairo?"

For Nikki, he had a wide, friendly smile that transformed his face from an intimidating ex-military operator into someone's husband, someone's father. "To Egypt," he corrected her. Then he turned to Jack, and his pleasant expression fell.

"You are cursed," he said simply. "To leave means you will not be welcomed back."

Jack stared at him a long second. "So, like, I can't take the Grail past the seal?"

If their Egyptian friend caught the reference, he didn't give it away. "The medallion was given to you. It is yours. It will protect you within these borders. And trust me, you need all the protection you can get."

And with those cryptic words, the officer strode past them, taking the stairs two at a time back into the precinct.

Mac glanced at Nikki and Jack, and without another word they silently piled into the car and fled.

-M-

"Dude, no. Uh-uh. We are _not_ taking that thing with us!"

Mac let the medallion dangle from his hand by its leather cord, the stylized bird catching the light. "What, this?" he asked innocently, and offered it to Jack.

His partner looked like he was going to crawl over the back of his seat to get away from it. "C'mon, man, you're holding actual proof of what I been sayin' all these years-"

"Really." Nikki had chosen the bench that stretched along one wall of the DXS jet, which put her closest to a USB plug to charge a backup mobile. "Weren't you telling us just last night that the 'Curse of the Pharaoh' was made up to sell papers?"

"Well, yeah, that was!" His voice was plaintive. "But this ain't! You heard what he said! I'm cursed!"

Mac laughed and took the seat opposite Jack as the copilot closed and secured the side door. "The literal translation of curse, in Arabic, means oath. Not just the swearing kind," he added, in case Jack decided to suggest a few. "If you are cursed, then you've made an oath, or someone has made an oath to you."

"Yeah! An oath to curse my ass!"

Mac gave up with a chuckle, glancing at Nikki, who was looking at the two of them with a fond exasperation. "And speaking of your ass, I wanna know how you didn't notice some three thousand year old Egyptian chick goosing you."

Jack fixed her with a very stern look. "I was gettin' sliced and diced, thank you very much! If this is protection, fat lotta good . . ." But then he trailed off, with a troubled look, and Mac glanced at Jack's chest.

The stain on his maroon shirt was definitely blood.

"Take off your shirt," Mac instructed, getting back to his feet and heading for the first aid kit.

Nikki raised an eyebrow. "Wow. He's a lot nicer when he says that to me."

Mac pretended he hadn't heard, and knelt by the seats in the back, pulling the kit loose as the jet taxied.

"Yeah, well, just give it a couple years. Once he starts takin' you for granted, it's all downhill."

There was frankly no safe retort he could make, so Mac just set the canvas kit beside Jack's seat, fishing out alcohol pads and butterfly bandages.

Jack had not, in fact, removed his shirt, and Mac gave him a long look, slipping on a pair of nitrile treatment gloves. His partner stared at him a moment, then dredged up the beginnings of a dirty grin.

Mac could see where he was headed from a mile away. "How much do you want this to hurt?"

The grin subsided a little, and Jack quirked a brow in Nikki's direction. "See what I mean?"

MacGyver shook his head, and helped Jack untack the shirt from the improvised bandaging he'd done –

It seemed like a hell of a lot longer than six hours ago.

It wasn't the first time he'd cleaned Jack up from one injury or another, and Jack didn't seem to care that Nikki was there, but as soon as the tee shirt bandaging was off, she got up silently and padded to the back of the plane. He heard the bathroom door click quietly a few moments later.

"Hope she stays put back there," Jack muttered, hissing when Mac started cleaning the wounds. "We'll be takin' off any second."

"Not her first jet ride," he reminded his partner.

"Yeah, I know." His partner grit his teeth at a particularly strong stinging sensation, and Mac backed off with the alcohol pads to give him a second. Once Jack resumed breathing, Mac returned to it.

"Her first foreign jail cell, though."

That was true. Also her first getting captured and stuffed in a crate. And her first fleeing a gallery full of terrorists and murderers. Probably her first RPG.

"Our buddy there, he said somethin' that worries me a little."

Mac sat back on his heels, tossing the alcohol pads in the tiny trash can and opening a pack of butterfly closures. "For the last time, you're not cursed, Jack-"

"Nah, not that – but c'mon, even you gotta admit you're a little surprised you can't explain this away-"

Mac suppressed a grin. "Nothing surprises me; I'm a scientist."

Jack snorted. Loudly. "Yeah, well, science me this, Professor Jones – are we gonna start glowin'?"

Mac had no doubt the Egyptian tactical officer had been telling the truth. That they'd set off radiation detectors. He could almost remember hearing the alarm, thinking it was some kind of weird clanking. The shrapnel had cracked the core of the tank, if it hadn't ruptured it altogether.

"We'll be fine," he said softly.

Probably.

"Seriously though – are we . . . is it safe for her to be around us?"

That, at least, he was a little more sure about. "Yeah, for the same reason you don't become radioactive when you get an x-ray. Think of radiation like – light." Which was very much a form of radiation, but he knew Jack didn't care. "The core of the tank got cracked - probably a very small one. The light trapped inside can only shine out through the crack. So as long as you're not standing in front of it, you're fine."

Jack seemed to accept that explanation, and he only fidgeted the normal amount as Mac applied the butterfly closures. "Some of these are deep, man, you're gonna need real stitches-"

"Back atcha, brother," and Jack nodded his chin at Mac's head.

Honestly, he hadn't even really touched it. Nikki had used her headscarf as a handkerchief during the car ride to Alexandria, and pressure had eventually made it stop bleeding, which was good enough for him. He still hadn't actually checked himself for any other blast damage, but he figured if he'd picked up any serious injuries, they'd have made themselves known. Still, by tomorrow he was going to be too stiff and sore to even move.

"And that's not countin' the ass chewin' we're gonna get when we land."

Mac applied a strip of gauze over the butterfly bandages, standing so he could loop it around Jack's chest. "Yeah."

Yeah. That was gonna be awesome.

A soft chime rang through the cabin, letting them know take-off was imminent, and Mac braced himself and re-packed the first aid kit as they accelerated down the runway. Once they were truly airborne, and he felt stable enough, Mac moved to the back of the cabin, replacing the first aid kit and pulling Jack's go-bag from storage. He fished out a clean shirt and a couple aspirin and headed back, dropping into the seat beside his partner.

Silently, he offered the shirt, and Jack took it and slowly pulled it on.

"I don't take you for granted," Mac said, when Jack had struggled fully into the shirt. "I know that I'd be dead and that bomb would have gone off just like Farhad planned if you hadn't been there."

Jack gave him an odd look, accepting the pills and dry-swallowing them while he pulled at his close-fitting tee to get it to settle over the bandaging. "Aww, dude, don't go gettin' sappy on me now just 'cause we about headed up to that big ranch in the sky."

Mac shook his head. "Jack . . . we've cut it close before, but-"

His partner blew out a sigh. ". . . yeah."

_But never like this._

He could have lost them both. Both Jack and Nikki. So many close calls. He'd made so many mistakes –

Too many.

He swallowed away the lump threatening to rise in his throat. Jack was right; he was getting sappy. " . . . thanks, man."

Jack looked at him, really looked, his brown eyes soft and serious. "Always." For a moment, neither said anything, then Jack started reclining his seat. Once he had it where he wanted it, he settled in. "'Sides, you're gonna smooth all this over with Patty, right?"

It was Mac's turn to snort. "Right. What do you think I should start with? That we don't have the strontium, Farhad, _or_ Zoheir . . ?"

"Nah, I like the part where we framed the CIA – probably legitimately just blew a couple ops there. But taking an RPG with a car, right in the streets of Cairo, that's good too . . ."

"Oh, yeah," Mac agreed. "Yeah, but you know, the arson in Sharm, technically we could call that a win, I mean, we destroyed weapons that were certainly going to be used against civilians or foreign governments, so-"

"Yeah, but then we dumped radioactive waste in a pool –"

"A concrete pool," Mac defended. "That's really how we treat nuclear waste even when it's being disposed of properly."

There was a brief silence. "Really?"

Mac shrugged. "Well, it stays radioactive for ten thousand years, so yeah. We have to put it _somewhere_."

They chewed on that a moment. "So," Jack said finally, "We miss anything?"

"Well, we lost the van," Nikki murmured behind them, retaking her seat on the bench. Mac glanced over at her, but she looked about the same as she had before. The cut on the corner of her mouth looked a little better, and he wondered if she'd iced it. He nodded.

"Yeah, we did lose the van."

"Aaand . . ." and she winced sympathetically, "we kinda turned a museum's staging warehouse into a crater."

Mac closed his eyes with a groan. "Ugh. I still feel sick about that."

"Listen, bro, you did what you had to do."

Mac's eyes suddenly snapped open. "Shit. I forgot to call Bozer back."

Something moved in his peripheral vision, and Nikki was still smiling at him, waving the smartphone she had charging. "You might want to give it another couple hours. It's three in the morning back home."

"Yeah, Geekachu," Jack teased. "Sister, do me a favor and drag his ass back to the first aid kit, make sure his brains aren't leakin' out?"

Mac's initial thought was to protest, because if his scalp had finally stopped bleeding, poking around was going to make it start again, but then he remembered that concrete is not a terribly clean surface, and his right shoulder could probably use a little cleanup as well.

"We really do need to figure out our game plan with Director Thornton," he tried, one last time. "I'm not going to tell her that you got an ancient phoenix medallion slash get out of jail free card because a _mummy_ handed it to you –"

Jack's eyes cracked back open. "How many times do I have to tell you? She offered it, but I declined, and then turned around and shot some guys, and she musta snuck it in there." And then the look turned suspicious. "And I don't want that damn thing, I never wanted that damn thing, you brought it on this plane, so it's yours now, you're welcome."

Mac gave his partner an amused look. ". . . that belongs in a museum."

Jack broke out into a broad grin. "If you say the next line, I'll slap that smirk right off your face."

"What happened to not poking the bear?" Nikki inquired politely, heading towards the back – and the first aid kit – and he knew there was no more putting it off. He was still smiling to himself as he followed her, and obediently took the seat Nikki indicated as she pulled the kit free.

Then it was her turn to smirk. "Take off your shirt."

He raised his eyebrows with a grin. "Yes ma'am."

The actual taking off of the shirt was a little more painful than he was expecting, and she made a face as she examined the back of his shoulder. "Ouch. Your skin looks like lasagna."

"Concrete's a lot more abrasive than it looks." She also donned treatment gloves – a little less suggestively than he expected, meaning his shoulder probably didn't look very good at all – and he spent the next few minutes being very uncomfortably reminded that he'd done the same to Jack moments ago.

"Well, good news, I don't think you need any stitches here . . ." She handed him a wide, square bandage, and he opened it for her, angling the paper so she could easily grab the contents. She pressed the bandage on carefully, and he had to admit, once there was no more air against it, it felt a little better.

"What about you? Anything else I should know about?"

"Mmm," she said, guiding his head down to look at his lap. Her fingers were very gentle as she smoothed back his hair. "Just the cut. Maybe a couple bruises. Looks like I got off easy again."

He leaned back, pulling his head free of her hands, and then he reached up and caught them, as well as her eyes. "Nikki . . . no you didn't."

She tilted her head. "Well, I'm not the one getting all bandaged up, now am I."

"Hey." He tugged at her hands, drawing her into the seat on the other side of him. "You were alone, without backup, against at least two armed men who were under orders to _kill_ you. If that's your idea of 'getting off easy' I'd hate to see what you feel a real problem is."

Nikki's lips turned up, but he had no illusions it was a smile, and she looked away, at the floor. "You make it sound more impressive than it was-"

"I know how impressive it was. I've been there. I was terrified."

Her lips twisted. "I cannot imagine you terrified of anything."

He tilted his head, trying to catch her eyes. "What, you couldn't see my face when that video call connected?"

The twisted lips thinned. "Actually, you just looked pissed."

He almost laughed. "So did you."

Nikki _did_ laugh, then, and finally look at him. "I was," she admitted. "Mostly at myself."

"You should be proud. I am." When she shook her head, he pulled her hands a little closer. "Look, I know you see us – really, Jack – getting into fights all the time, cracking jokes, but the only reason we do that is because anything else is . . ." He searched for the words. "You're either laughing or you're crying."

"Yeah, well, already did the latter half of that, so I guess I'm doing good."

"Yeah." He nudged her with a knee to get her eyes back. "You're doing _great_."

Nikki smiled at him, a real one this time, and then winced a little, and pulled a hand away to touch the cut on her lip. "This thing is pretty irritating though."

"Yeah, I think so too." He leaned in, and gently kissed the right corner of her mouth. "Tell you what, I'll work around it if you go easy on my shoulder."

Nikki drew herself up a little straighter. "Oh, not already a member of the Mile High Club?"

He pretended to think about it, and she pretended to wait for a response.

"Well you know," and he stood, drawing her up with him, "most people think that it's an effect of the lower air pressure in a typical jetliner cabins, but anyone who lives up in the mountains can tell you that's not it."

"No?"

He made a noise to the negative. "It's more likely the vibrations of the plane-"

But she didn't really seem to care, and suddenly the science didn't seem so important.

-M-

So I think that wraps us up. All canon clues covered. [Please see Day One/Baba Ganoush for the complete listing.] I know I'm a little late to the party when it comes to Cairo, but this is the version that will be referenced in the Turkey Day sequel.

(And I'm more than a little irritated that I couldn't find a good place to throw in "Fortune and glory, kid. Fortune and glory." but Jack would NOT cooperate.)

Next up should be Jack and Matty's falling out. Somewhere in this mess will also be the first time Mac trusted Jack's brain, not just his aim, as well as the first time Mac's parents took him to the beach. And that should wrap us up!


	5. Elephant Ears

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

-M-

**AFGHANISTAN – ZABOL PROVINCE**

"Snakebite Zero Three, this is Snakebite One One, over."

Mac roused himself from his thoughts, glancing across the cabin of the humvee. His passenger didn't look or sound terribly alarmed, and he gestured towards the village coming up on their right. "Park us under that tree right there."

He stared at Jack another few seconds, expectantly, and their radios crackled.

"Snakebite One One, this is Snakebite Zero Three, go ahead, over."

Jack Dalton thumbed the broadcast button on his radio. "We're runnin' a little hot, gonna check our coolant level. We're stopping under cover about half a klick from Shahjoy, over." He released the transmit button. "Seriously, dude. Pull over."

MacGyver glanced back down at the dash, studying the instrument panel. "We're not running hot-"

"Well I am," Jack drawled. "And it's way the hell past lunchtime." He knocked two knuckles – one gloved, one not - against the passenger side window for emphasis.

"Snakebite One One, good copy. Advise when you roll out, over."

Mac reluctantly slowed the vehicle and made for the copse of _Ulmus wallichiana_ Jack had indicated. "We're only an hour from base. Sure you can't hold it?"

Jack gave him a look. "Was that a thinly veiled derogatory reference to the age of my bladder?"

The 'vee ground to a halt under the trees, and Mac put it in park and killed the engine. "Nope." He gave his overwatch a crooked grin. "Wasn't veiled at all."

"Well har har." Dalton opened the door and slid out of the vehicle, slipping his rifle onto his back. "You don't need to gear up, kid. This village is friendly."

Mac dismounted the vehicle, eyeing his pack a moment. Where the MREs were stored. "Well, if you want lunch-"

"Then I'll get me some." His overwatch was already several strides away. "And if you knock it off with the old man jokes, maybe I'll get you some too."

More than a little curious, Mac locked up the 'vee and followed him.

The trees were about a hundred yards from the first building that marked the village proper, and a few young boys came tearing around the corner. Whatever their disagreement, they both came up short, staring at the two American soldiers approaching. The taller of the boys hit his companion in the chest, and they both turned tail and disappeared.

Pretty much like every village they entered, friendly or otherwise.

"You know this place?" Gravel rattled on his left, and Mac watched a sky blue Volkswagon pass by on the main road. There were two passengers, both men, and to Mac's surprise, they also pulled off at the village, disappearing around the same building.

Jack hadn't turned his head, but he knew his overwatch had been keeping an eye on it, probably since it showed up in their rear view mirror twenty kilometers ago. "How long you been wearing your big boy pants now? Ninety-two days and a wake-up?"

It was a little unnerving how his EOD classmates still referred to time by weeks and months, and everyone on their third and fourth tours counted time only in units of days, even into the hundreds. He had technically graduated from training – meaning he was no longer paired with a training officer, and instead paired with Jack - a little over three months. Three months sounded like nothing, barely enough time to get his feet wet. Or in the case of Afghanistan, covered in moon dust.

But calling it ninety-two days made it sound a hell of a lot longer.

When he didn't respond, Jack glanced over at him. "'Bout time you learned to recognize a cutie when you see one."

It took him longer than it should have to translate that into QT – a QuikTrip. It wasn't an acronym he'd heard since he'd left the States.

MacGyver eyed the village again. No gas pumps or convenience stores in sight. In fact, besides the relatively clear dirt road leading off the pavement into the village, he wouldn't have suspected it was well traveled at all.

But now that he was looking, the fine, flour-like dust ground out of the rocks by countless tires told him this village was frequented quite a bit. That building on the corner, that he had assumed was a home, was in fact some kind of shop, and its red-painted shutters were opened. Most buildings that faced the main roads in Afghanistan were closed off, windows included.

As they came closer, what one of the Brits on the FOB called a 'jinglytruck' came into view, heading ponderously down the main road towards them, and Mac watched his cover break out in a genuine grin.

"Nice! Tour bus comin' through means we'll score some good eats."

The large red truck didn't disappoint, slowing significantly to avoid tipping as it all but wallowed like a wide-bottomed ship off the pavement onto the dirt and sand. It was easily as tall as a double decker bus, but thicker on the top than the bottom, and covered in bells and swinging chains that made it jingle, hence the moniker. They were fairly common in Afghanistan, near as Mac could tell, and were used to move both passengers and goods across the country. The windows were nearly all open, and faces under colored scarves and hajibs peered out of at least half.

He and Jack finally made it to the corner shop and turned down the main thoroughfare, finding a fairly wide street choked with vehicles. The jinglytruck they'd seen arrive was one of two, and various other four doors were there, including a fairly nice older model Mercedes. They were parked wherever their drivers had decided to stop, and Mac could see why they'd left the humvee where they had. No way would he have been able to maneuver down this street.

Also, given the smells that were coming from improvised barbeques and colorful little stalls, he wasn't sure why he'd _want_ to be driving. It was like a little pop-up market.

His cover was watching him take it all in. "Better than an MRE, am I right?"

Most of the shops were probably also residences, he could see living quarters through the open doors – and nearly all were open – and people were in and out, setting out wares on rickety tables, chatting with strangers, haggling for goods. Though a few Afghans looked their way, there was none of the open staring he'd become used to, nor any sense of unease with their presence.

For nearly the first time since he'd set foot in Afghanistan, he didn't feel completely and totally out of place.

"So this is a friendly village."

Jack clapped him on the shoulder. "Figured you'd never seen one before. Shahjoy's about as friendly as it gets." He pointed to a few of the buildings. "You noticed the road – you see a lotta moon dust, it means a lotta traffic. Open shutters and open doors means open for business. Mostly men working the stalls, so they're expecting non-locals, maybe even non-Muslims. About an hour from a well-established forward operating base, right off the main drag, so it's a good guess soldiers stop here from time to time. They didn't want us around, there'd be a guy with a rifle sittin' right over there." Jack indicated a little shed, very near to the main road, with an awning that left it perfectly shaded, though it was past noon.

There was a textile stool under it, sitting empty.

Jack gave him a second more to absorb everything, and then the older man dragged him towards the nearest stall.

The first few were cookware, cups and plates in simple, traditional designs. If he thought it would actually make it back to Bozer he might've picked up a samovar, which was kind of an urn in which you could heat or boil water for tea service for your twenty closest friends. He had nothing durable enough to box one in, but he made a mental note to try to swing back for one before his first visit back stateside. The prices here were much more reasonable than in Kabul.

Though money was a thing he hadn't thought to bring with him, considering their mission had been to remove two suspected IEDs off the road near Nowrak. There'd only been one – the other major disturbance in the dirt and mud near the road had been the result of efforts by a very determined and possibly inbred goat, who had also taken a shine to the humvee's left rear tire.

It had been resolved without shooting anything, which was always a plus, and without anything blowing up, also a plus. Which was not to say he and Jack were not both sporting bruises from the encounter. And though Mac was very sensitive to where food products came from, at this point he wouldn't mind eating some goat. Maybe even _that_ goat, specifically.

Which brought him back to the problem of money. And not having any.

"You know what this QT is missing?"

Jack cocked an eyebrow at him, looking over the table.

"An ATM."

His cover chuckled. "Relax, kid. I'll spot ya."

Before long they made it to a family that was roasting kabobs of some kind of meat over a small wheelbarrow. Mac had no idea what it was, and he didn't ask as Jack unzipped the pouch on his arm normally reserved for gum and bandaids and pulled out a small, folded rectangle of green and pink bills. Two afghani got him two kabobs, and a woman in a fairly conservative hajib accepted them from the man Mac assumed was her husband, coated them in some kind of slightly green yogurt-based sauce, and passed them back to him. Jack took both, offering one to Mac, and he accepted it with a nod of thanks.

Whatever it was, it wasn't nearly as tough as it looked, and the mint yogurt sauce was actually pretty good.

It lasted them half of the trip down one side of the street. The bills came out again, this time for cups of a hot cinnamon spice tea that washed down the mystery meat perfectly, and Mac blew on his while Jack chatted up the man with a broken English-Pashto combination that had them both laughing and clapping each other on the shoulder like they were old friends.

Forget having never been to a friendly village before. He'd never been this close to a friendly Jack Dalton before. He had no idea the man could speak any Pashto at all, and he'd never seen his cover interact with Afghans voluntarily. They were still on the clock, they were still in uniform, and Jack was acting like he was back stateside at a smalltown Texas street fair. He was wearing his sunglasses, so it was hard to see where his eyes were, but he'd never so much as twitched a hand for his rifle, not even when a few boys – possibly the same ones from earlier - had set off a string of firecrackers behind a few of the women who had come in on the jinglytruck.

He seemed completely at ease. It was –

Weird. The whole thing was a little weird.

"Oh, hey. You gotta try this stuff. Kinda like elephant ears."

It was the booth directly next door, so Mac didn't feel too badly wandering away with his ceramic cup of tea. Jack was salivating over some kind of irregularly shaped fried dough that was sprinkled with sugar and what looked like ground pistachios. Mac had never seen anything like it, and the operator gave him somewhat surprised look.

"Elephant ears," he repeated. "You know, like when your mom would bake a few pies, and there were extra strips of pie dough, she'd put a little bit of butter, sugar and cinnamon on 'em and bake 'em, just as a little treat?"

Mac flashed him a quick smile and sucked down a sip of tea. "Yeah, I think I remember Bozer's mom doing that once or twice. Don't remember what she called them."

Jack's eyebrows rose. "Spent a lotta time at his place? Or your mom just wasn't that good of a cook?"

He and Jack Dalton were on significantly better terms than they'd been three months ago, but he wasn't about to take him for a walk down 'my mom died before I remember her cooking much of anything and my dad bailed when I was twelve' lane. "To be honest, time spent eating was time not spent working on science projects, so I kinda just inhaled food as needed so I could get back to more interesting stuff."

He could tell Jack hadn't totally bought that, but he seemed content to let it go. "Funny you should mention science projects."

Mac blinked at him, not following, and Jack nodded past the table full of pastries to the shelving set up just outside the front door. There were cooking utensils, squares of a thick-woven fabric he assumed were hot pads, and a battered old radio playing more static than talk show. It was old, with a bulb backlighting the frequency dial, and he watched it flickering for a moment.

"Bet if you fixed that up, that nice lady'd give us some of these elephant ears in thanks."

The nice lady in question was also in a fairly conservative hijab, moving dough out of the indoor kitchen to the outdoor tables, and her son, who looked to be around fourteen, was watching them from the door with distrustful eyes.

That, at least, felt a little more like the Afghanistan he'd come to know.

Considering Jack had paid – unasked – for both the kebabs and tea, Mac figured picking up dessert was the least he could do. He knew very little Pashto, so he didn't even try. He gave the kid a friendly smile, then pointed at the radio. Then he gestured at himself, and mimed twisting the dials.

The boy gave him a dark look. "Radio not for sale," he declared.

Mac re-evaluated his new friend. "I can fix it," he offered. Then he reached into his vest and pulled his swiss army knife free. "If you want?"

His hunch was right; the kid's eyes went to the red multitool, with its enticing and mysterious metal blades, all still tucked away and enigmatic. After an appropriate amount of time – enough to let this American know that he was only acquiescing out of some kind of obligation to not be rude – the boy huffed and fetched the radio. It was attached to what looked like a homemade extension cord, that ran up the wall of the house, and Mac took a couple steps back, surprised to see what looked like the edge of a solar panel on the roof.

Selling pastries must make good money.

Mac plopped Indian-style on the ground between the booth and the house, which was about as far as the cord would stretch, and he made quick work of unscrewing the back. It was European made, at least thirty years old, and the super-fine sand they all called moon dust had caked itself around the board. Mac blew out what he could, then used the can opener attachment's flat edge to chip the really encrusted stuff off. Sure enough, the salt in the sand had corroded the connection between the power supply and the transceiver, and the caked sand – really almost glass at this point - was all that was still holding it together.

He scraped that out, too, then stripped a little of the wire back until he found uncorroded metal. He was going to lose about an inch, and there wasn't enough play in the existing wire to make up that distance, but a little searching in his right pocket from their adventures earlier in the morning turned up some wire from the IED that would work as a patch.

He swapped the can opener for the pliers, and cut an inch and a half pigtail for the radio from the spare wire, twisting it onto the end of the original wire. "Hey Jack. Can I see your lighter?"

His cover had been watching something down the street, but his right hand absently fished around in his vest. He produced a red Bic lighter.

Mac held out a hand, expecting the lighter to be tossed his way, but nothing else happened.

He rewound the words in his head. See the lighter. Very funny. "Well, I mean, if you don't really want some elephant ears, that's cool too . . ."

Jack smirked and refocused on him. "Given how frequently you ignore orders, guess I shouldn't be surprised you've broken rule number one about eighty times by now." He handed it over, and Mac reached out and took it, shaking his head.

"We should probably just rescind rule number one at this point."

"Only if Jack Dalton gets to rescind rule number two."

Mac groaned, grimacing like he was in pain, and his cover chuckled. That grimace shortly reappeared, real this time as he singed his thumb, but the old solder had softened just enough, and Mac used the tip of the pliers to mash the wire firmly into the small glob. He blew on it to cool it, waiting until the board was no longer smoking, and at an impatient snapping sound above him he also blew on the lighter's end, just to make sure it was also cool enough to pocket, and held it blindly above his head. It was taken, and he heard Velcro rip open as it was tucked back into place.

It wasn't like he didn't return the things he borrowed. Except for things like the gum wrapper. Or the zipper pull, it had actually been consumed as part of the fix. A couple bullets, but that was no big deal, just a little paperwork. A pair of shoelaces had bitten it when he needed a few extra feet to safely dispose of that IED by the riverbed, and frankly Jack had been more impressed with the explosion than pissed about having to get another set of shoelaces from the FOB's box-kicker.

Mac plugged the radio back in, still mindful of his young audience, and flicked it on. The bulb was steady this time, as was the transmission – as good as AM radio got in the desert, at any rate – and the boy's eyes lit up as Mac screwed the back on and handed him the device.

"There you go," he said, and untangled his legs, brushing off the sand as he got back to his feet.

A small crowd had gathered behind him, completely unnoticed, and Mac gave them a hesitant smile while his cover accepted two of the pastries as payment. He folded up his multitool and accepted his reward, and he'd gotten a bite into it before a man approached him, holding a very worn looking pair of trimming shears. They were rebranded Wahl, a heavy duty model, and just jammed up. While he still had it in pieces, Mac was able to mime sharpening the blades to the owner, and hadn't taken more than two steps before he was approached by another man, this time with an oscillating fan.

Jack just chuckled, hands hanging off his vest. "Looks like I found the ATM."

Mac gave him a look. "You knew this was going to happen, didn't you."

He shrugged. "Helpin' the locals is part of our ROE. You can always tell 'em no."

Word got around. By the time they were working their way back up the other half of the street, at nearly every stall someone would emerge from their house with something that wasn't operating correctly. In return, Mac was handed some other kind of delicacy. Some of the foods he recognized as typically reserved for celebrations or special occasions, and he wondered if this was the equivalent of an Afghani tourist trap, rather than a QT.

"Hey, Maff, heck hiff ow!"

He looked up to find his partner with his mouth half-open and full of some kind of dumpling, and he offered three on a small plate. "Hoff," he added. A little steam puffed out of his mouth to accentuate his words.

"Noted." He presumed he was also on the hook to pay for the dumplings, and he was surprised to see a little girl, no more than maybe five years old, eyes as round as saucers, hiding behind her father's leg. She was holding something, but he couldn't see what it was. Her father gave Mac what was very decidedly a warning look, but his expression softened as he turned to his daughter, and his voice was gentle.

The language didn't matter. Mac knew exactly what they were saying.

Eventually, a little carved mule and a cart came into view. The mule was still in one piece, but the cart looked like it had been stepped on. Possibly by her father, from the slightly guilty look on his face, and Mac smiled and knelt beside the stall, holding out a hand.

"Can I see?"

It took a bit more cajoling from her father, but eventually the dark-eyed little girl came forward juuuust enough to hand him the toys. Then she was back behind the shield of her father.

Mac grinned and evaluated this new puzzle. Definitely stepped on. The axle of the two-wheeled wagon was snapped. He just needed a tube or dowel of some kind, a pen body would do the trick –

Mac glanced up, looking for Jack, and found that, outside of a few less interested passers by, his cover was nowhere to be seen.

Probably three stalls up looking for a beer to cool his tongue. And frankly, even if it did constitute drinking on the job, at this point Mac wouldn't say no to one either.

With no pen handy, Mac went back to his vest, pulling out the contents. Nothing useful in his individual first aid kit, chemlights were no good, some earplugs, spare cables for the radio, ID tags and card, a strobe . . . he was about to give up when he dug up half a pencil from the map compartment.

Perfect.

It was just a little smaller than the wagon wheels, and he used electrical tape to make bumpers on the ends so the axel didn't slide out of the wheels. Noticing that the mule had no harness, he pulled the bright yellow wire he'd used earlier out of his pocket, fashioning what he considered a very functional over the head harness that allowed for easy removal of the mule when not in use.

Once done, he set the mule – now with a colorful harness – and its full functional wagon back on the ground, and re-packed his vest while the little girl considered her options. It was apparently still too close to him, so Mac stood slowly and took a few steps back, reclaiming the plate that Jack had handed him and giving her father a nod, stuffing a now-cooler dumpling into his mouth and glancing down the street.

The jinglytrucks had moved out in the meantime, clearing the street somewhat, and he finally spotted his cover way the hell down the row of stalls, in spirited conversation with an Afghan male. He thumbed over his shoulder, pointing back towards where the jeep was parked, and then both he and the Afghan shook hands before the man gestured, and then he and Jack disappeared into a shop.

Mac watched for a minute, nodding with a distracted smile while the little girl reclaimed her toy and her father was clearly thanking him, and after a few minutes, Jack re-emerged from the shop, zipping up the pouch on his uniformed arm where gum and bandaides were typically stored.

And, apparently, Afghani cash.

The man he'd been talking to emerged as well, handing him an old gas can, and it was apparent from the way they were handling it that it was light, meaning it was empty, or nearly so. Mac averted his eyes, stuffing another dumpling into his face, just in case Jack glanced down the street, and he busied himself with looking at the next stall, which sold scarves not unlike the one he himself wore.

There was a term in the army for informed gossip – rumint. It was a combination of rumor and intelligence. Rumint had it that less than scrupulous Army soldiers had sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of fuel to Afghan locals over the course of the support efforts in Afghanistan, usually in the form of diesel straight from the tank. Five gallons here, ten gallons there, it was hard for a mechanic to glance at an odometer in this kind of terrain and say that fuel usage was excessive. It depended on how much off-roading was being done, at what speed the vehicles were driven, wind, even temperature.

Skimming fuel off Uncle Sam seemed harmless enough, but being EOD, Mac knew _exactly_ how at risk those fuel trucks were, coming into the FOB to resupply the reservoir. And after three months working with him, Jack should damn well know it too. The IED they'd cleared just that morning was on a supply line.

Explained where the Afghani currency had come from, at any rate. And why Jack had been so keen to stop here, why he was so at ease with these people.

Mac ate the last dumpling, even though it tasted like ash in his mouth, and returned the plate to the stall. The man there nodded, accepting it without really looking at him, and Mac took that as his cue to finish up their little pit stop and express his disapproval to his cover.

Someone was speaking behind him, but in Mac's annoyance he didn't realize it was _at_ him until a hand touched his shoulder, lightly. He turned to find the little girl's father, gesturing back towards his stall. Mac flashed him a quick smile.

"I'm . . . we're good, right?" Fixing a toy wasn't quite the same as fixing a fan, but –

But he didn't exactly have cash if it wasn't.

The man nodded agreeably, but still gestured for him to come, and Mac squashed his irritation and followed him back, not to his stall, but towards his house. He stepped inside, then gestured again, and Mac hesitated. The sun was pretty high, they'd been here over an hour and the Afghan jinglytrucks were gone, leaving significantly fewer people still on the street. If it was an appliance, like an oven or something he needed help with, it could take some time, and Dalton would have no idea where he was-

Not that the operator seemed to give much of a damn about that at the moment. And given how glued to his ass the man usually was, the whole thing seemed even more off.

Then again, it seemed everyone here was Jack's personal buddy. Maybe making that asshole worry was exactly what he needed to do to put a stop to this skimming nonsense.

Mind made up, and more than a little pissed off, Mac nodded and followed the vendor into his home. As expected, he was led towards the back of the dwelling, which was half shop and half living space. Besides food, it appeared the man worked with leather, he was perhaps a cobbler, and his daughter sat in the corner of the main room on a child sized stool, clutching her mule and cart to her chest.

Mac smiled at her, swallowing any irritation he was feeling for Dalton at the moment, and she sat like petrified _Sequoia langsdorfii_ and stared at him.

At a word he was beginning to think was 'come' in Pashto, Mac gave up trying to get on her good side, and followed her father.

The back of the house was darker, the windows closed up, and at first Mac couldn't figure out why, because it was stiflingly hot. There was a woman working over the stove, preparing some kind of rice dish he figured would be their evening meal, and she was dressed even more conservatively than the women he'd seen earlier, in a niqab that covered everything but her eyes. He felt a stab of guilt, knowing that if it was just her family in the dwelling, she wouldn't be forced to wear so much clothing in such a hot room, but then he heard the distinctive metallic grinding of a rifle round being loaded into a chamber, and he stopped dead in his tracks.

The girl's father stepped further into the kitchen, pulling his wife away from the stove and tucking her behind him into the corner, and Mac slowly turned, raising his hands. On the right-hand side of the room was a small table, and behind it another door, just barely cracked open. A man whose face was also covered held a rifle casually, one-handed, pointed directly at him. Every once in a while, he glanced out of the crack in the door, clearly waiting for something.

Mac had the feeling he didn't want to find out what that something was.

And given the way the girl's father was physically shielding his wife, the guilty expression he'd been wearing earlier, his utterly silent daughter glued to her stool in the other room, it was pretty clear what the price of trying to run away would be.

Mac took another step into the room, slowly, and the gunman gave him a sharp look. "Okay," he said softly. "It's okay. You're in charge."

Everything the Army had ever taught him about being in an abduction situation scrolled through his head. Avoid the situation if you can. If escape is not realistic, don't challenge. Don't make eye contact. Keep quiet, the locals can't or won't help you. Do what you're told, within reason. Signal if you can. Observe everything.

If he hadn't been shot outright, and they'd gone to this much trouble, they were probably hoping to spirit him away before Jack came back. At least that meant they wanted him alive.

For a little while, anyway.

And either way, it was an opportunity to signal to Jack, either via radio or some other means, that something was happening.

The gunman swiped at his eyes with his sleeve, clearly just as hot as the rest of them were, and Mac kept his eyes down and shifted another step closer. Outside of the kitchen table and the stove, there wasn't much he could get his hands on quickly enough to do any good. The house was made from baked mud, meaning upsetting the stove wouldn't set it on fire. Nothing in the room seemed to lend itself to enough noise, and the explosives they're retrieved from the disarmed IED were in the 'vee.

Radio it was.

The gunman risked another glance at the door, the motion more irritated now, and Mac waited for his opportunity. The door cracked open slightly more as he tried to get a better view around it, and his left arm came up to wipe at his eyes.

Mac keyed his radio, twice. It was all he had time to do.

Since technically his cover was also the com officer of the pair of them, Mac's radio was still set to their team operating frequency, meaning the TOC – specifically Snakebite Zero Three – wasn't going to hear him. If Dalton was too busy siphoning fuel to pay attention, he was going to be out of luck.

The radio audio was going into the earpiece, the reply was inaudible to everyone but him. "I hear you, Mac. When I say go, I need ya to get that guy's attention. Nothing stupid."

Mac digested that without changing his position, or his expression.

The gunman glanced out the door again, shifting his aim slightly more towards the floor, and Mac eyeballed the distance between them. A rifle was an ungainly weapon, and he was holding it one-handed. If he could get a fingertip on that barrel he could turn it, as long as he shoved it to his right any discharge would hit the wall-

His radio crackled with an urgent whisper. " _Go_!"

Nothing stupid.

Mac took a step forward, and he licked his lips. "Uh, sir, I don't know what you want but-"

He wasn't sure if it was the words or the movement, but the combination certainly did the trick and the gunman leaned off the wall, putting his other hand on the rifle and shaking it at him. He was only a step away from coming into range when the door opened just a sliver more, and the extra light was blocked by a large figure. Dalton didn't fire a shot; he grabbed the rifle sling around the man's neck and yanked straight back.

The rifle flew up and out of the gunman's hands, whacking him right in his face, and then Jack hauled the man bodily backwards out the door.

Mac held out a hand to the couple in the corner, urging them to stay put, and he waited. That rifle could still go off-

There was the unmistakable sound of something hard hitting flesh, a grunt of pain. It was followed by two more strikes, then something heavy hit the ground. The door was half-open; Mac backed up a little to stay out of line of sight of whoever was on the other side of it, and he keyed his radio.

". . . you good?"

There was a long pause.

"Clear."

Mac waved at the man again, to stay where he was, and then he approached the back door, and cautiously peered out.

Jack was in sight, just barely, dragging the unconscious Afghan around the back of the house. He didn't look up, and Mac followed after him. He came around the corner about the time Jack was putting zipties on the gunman, and MacGyver was stunned to see three other men, all unconscious and bound, slumped in a neat line beside him.

The second he was done, Dalton stepped over to him, and Mac barely got his mouth open before he was grabbed unceremoniously by the vest. He almost punched Jack before he realized the man wasn't attacking – he was checking him.

For injuries.

Jack didn't even seem to notice Mac's combative attitude, fully focused on his task, and he even forcibly spun him around, pulling his vest to check his back. "You good? No new holes? Anybody touch ya?"

Mac tried to pull away, and he was spun back around. Jack's eyes were finally on his face, and Mac wasn't sure where to even start.

"What . . . what the _hell_ -"

Jack apparently interpreted that as "I'm fine, no one touched me," because he backed off and keyed his radio. "Snakebite Zero Three, this is Snakebite One One, over."

"Jack-" He switched his radio to the TOC channel even as he said it.

"-his is Snakebite Zero Three, go ahead, over."

His cover didn't miss a beat. "We got a situation here. Four T-Men just tried to abduct my EOD. We have them in custody, no injuries. Request ARSIC dispatch ANPs to Shahjoy. We'll retain custody until handoff. Over."

Mac tried to sort out the acronyms. ARSIC was the Afghan Regional Security Integrated Command, which worked with the Afghan National and Border police to try to keep order. ANPs were the National Police variety, the uniformed Afghan police force. The US had no authority to actually arrest Afghan nationals, they really had no authority to even hold or restrain them without agreement from ARSIC-

"Good copy. Stand by, Snakebite One One."

Jack released the radio and looked him over. "You sure you're okay?"

The pieces were still swirling around his head. "You – you intentionally left me there –"

At some point Jack had pulled his eye protection – probably looking into the dim kitchen – and his brown eyes were hard and serious. "Yeah."

"And the – I saw you with the gas can-"

At this point the Delta operator's eyebrows rose. "Really? Not bad, kid."

And then it all clicked into place.

Jack had done that to make the insurgents – whether they were truly Taliban or not – think that he was just another Army grunt selling gas to the locals. The jinglytrucks were leaving, the crowds were dispersing, they had a small window to take him in any of those vehicles and Jack wouldn't have known which one, satellite wouldn't help them –

Jack had given them the literal perfect opportunity.

Which didn't leave many questions at all. "How did you know?"

His partner followed his train of thought pretty well, considering he hadn't said much of it out loud. "Y'mean how'd I know they'd go for ya?" In answer, he reached out and fingered Mac's EOD patch. "This shit's catnip, dude. Surely they told you bomb nerds why you got meat-eaters watchin' out for ya."

Mac was well aware that EOD were targets – they were one of the only tools the Army had against IEDs, which were by far the most effective weapons in the enemy's arsenal. He knew very well why he and the rest of the top quarter of his EOD class had been assigned to the next available SERE training by their CO. And he knew enough about Jack Dalton, at this point, to know that he'd already been through SERE training, and a hell of a lot more than that.

"How did you know they were there?" A glance at the four of them – all still very unconscious, despite Jack's assertion there were 'no injuries' – showed that they were dressed exactly like every other man that had been in that crowd. They'd simply pulled down their headscarves to cover their faces.

In answer, his cover sighed, and glanced at the line himself. He'd just opened his mouth when the radio crackled.

"Snakebite One One, this is Snakebite Zero Three, over."

Jack grabbed his radio. "Go for Snakebite One One, over."

"ANPs are being dispatched to your location, ETA four zero mikes. Routing backup to your location, callsign Lancer Zero Seven. Lancer ETA is two zero mikes. Hold position, Lancer takes security once on site. How copy, over."

Jack's eyebrows twitched, but that was all the surprise he showed. "Snakebite Zero Three, good copy, we'll be on the lookout for Lancer. Over."

Then he smirked. "Well, kid, you're in for a treat." Then he paused. "Do me a favor, though. The jeep really did overheat . . . you with me?"

Mac took in the four unconscious guys – all downed without a shot, without so much as a yell – and then he found himself slowly nodding.

"Yeah. Jeep overheated."

The next eighteen or so minutes passed relatively slowly. Many people came to the back alley of the houses, staring at the men lined up against the wall and the very serious American soldier standing over them with his hand on his sidearm. Mac tried asking a few questions, but Jack waved him off, and Mac was again reminded that he couldn't be sure what language anyone spoke, and Jack probably had his reasons.

He was sure, now – more sure than ever – that Dalton would never have made them stop if he'd thought for an instant that anything remotely like this would happen. He'd been sure it was a friendly village. He'd been there before, clearly. The people remembered him, and some of them seemed glad to see him.

And Mac wondered if that was how Jack knew – if the man who sold them the tea, or the woman with the elephant ears, or the man selling dumplings had tipped him off. Had asked him for his help.

Villages could be turned from friendly to hostile in a night, because the ANP – the Afghan National Police – could only be in so many places, and they were only as loyal as their police force. Men could be bought, same as in the United States. American soldiers came and went, but these people, they lived here. There was nowhere for them to go, and the Taliban – or any other local warlord – could come and threaten them, even shoot them, almost at their leisure.

Telling Jack, if they'd done it, was taking a huge risk. There was no guarantee these four were the only ones. And that there wouldn't be retaliation against the village for their arrest. The Afghan judicial system was overwhelmed and flawed. Even with evidence, the illegal automatic weapons, and witness statements, these men could be free in a matter of days.

The fourteen year old boy who had been amazed by his swiss army knife. That little girl he was sure was still glued to her stool, if she wasn't in her father's arms. There was nothing he could do to make sure they stayed safe.

Mac pulled a couple paperclips from his vest, hoping for inspiration, some way to fix this, and by the time his radio crackled, it legitimately startled him.

"Snakebite One One, this is Lancer Zero Seven, how copy, over."

Jack smirked and grabbed his radio. "Lancer Zero Seven, this is Snakebite, good copy. We were startin' to worry you boys were lima lima mike foxtrot."

Mac wasn't familiar with the term, but the letters LLMF, plus context, brought a ready guess – Lost Like a Mother Fucker.

There was only the briefest of pauses. "You should be so lucky. Wrap up your shopping, ladies. ETA thirty seconds."

Jack glanced at his wrist and chuckled. "Right on the nose."

From his vantage, Mac could see the road headed north, towards their forward operating base, and while he didn't have his binoculars with him, he was pretty sure there was no vehicle, military or otherwise, arriving in the next thirty seconds.

Which probably meant –

He barely suppressed a flinch as a helicopter roared out of seemingly nowhere, popping up over the ridge to the north only about two hundred yards away. Even at that close distance, he didn't immediately recognize the silhouette of the bird, and it came in fast, picking an LZ like it had already scouted the area.

Then again, satellite being what it was, the TOC could have given them precise coordinates.

Jack put his back to the wash, unwilling to take his eyes off the insurgents, but Mac had no such qualms, closing his eyes and holding his breath against the swirling sand. The helo spun down, but not off, and four uniformed soldiers, all bearing the yellow patch of US Army Rangers, were up on them before the wind had even died down enough for Mac to risk turning around.

"Sergeant."

The greeting was to Dalton, which Mac found a little odd, considering his cover never wore any kind of identifying patch or insignia, including his rank.

Jack took it in stride, nodding to the man who'd spoken to him. "Major."

"These your T-Men?"

Around them, the other three Rangers wordlessly headed around the cobbler's house and disappeared.

"Yep."

"Any other excitement we should know about?"

"Nope. Just be sure to check the 'vee for any surprises our good friends here mighta left ya."

The Ranger and the Delta evaluated the four men, two of whom had come around when the helo landed. "You got 'em lined up so nice and pretty. Seems a shame to waste a formation like that."

"Yeah, I know." Though they were speaking loudly to be heard over the helo, Mac thought he could hear real regret in Jack's voice.

To shoot bound men, even enemies, would be unequivocally murder, and Mac lifted his head, giving Jack a warning look his partner clearly noticed.

So did the Ranger. "Who the hell's that? Your EOD's son?"

Mac transferred the warning glare to the Ranger, who started to chuckle. "Good ears on that one."

"Good instincts too," Jack added. "They're all yours, major."

"Copy. You and the kid are taking the bird back to base. We'll clean up here."

Mac just stared at them, not sure he'd actually understood that correctly. When Jack didn't protest, and even gestured that they should get moving, Mac approached – but not towards the helo.

"All due respect, sir, even if there's no new IED on the humvee, there are components of an IED I disarmed earlier today already on board. EOD needs to confirm safe transport."

The major's hands were resting on his rifle, and his eyes were sharp and amused. "Got it covered, son. Move out."

But that couldn't be it. Even if one of the other Rangers was trained for EOD – and it was probable - there would have to be a statement to the ANP, evidence collected, the insurgents would have to be processed, witnesses would need to be interviewed – _he_ would need to be interviewed, since he was the supposed victim –

The word struck Mac as utterly ridiculous. He had literally not even been touched. The cobbler's wife, on the other hand –

And they'd sent four Rangers and a helo to extract him? They were a freakin' hour from base -

"Soldier, do you know a goddamn order when you hear one?"

MacGyver pulled himself out of his thoughts and straightened a little out of sheer habit. "Yessir."

The major's eyes widened fractionally, and he turned to the Delta on his right. "Christ, is he gonna do a sniper check?"

Jack tried – and failed – to hide a grin. "I don't think they send EOD through Basic anymore, major." Then he gave an equally unsubtle 'get over here' glare and Mac curbed his displeasure – and seriously considered saluting the major, just to demonstrate that he knew what a 'sniper check' was - and obeyed.

The major yelled something over his shoulder, and while Mac couldn't make it out Jack nodded to show that he understood. Once he was closer to the bird, Mac could see it was a modified Black Hawk – heavily modified. The cockpit was full of specialized tech, and Jack let him take the canvas seat closest to the cockpit, settling himself on the floor with his back to the copilot's seat and clipping a strap to his vest that seemed to be hanging there for exactly that purpose.

Jack removed his helmet, clipping it to the front of his vest, and pulled on one of the on-board helmets, gesturing for Mac to do the same. It put them on radio with the pilots, and also offered quite a bit of sound protection.

"Jack, I still have to give a statement-"

His cover shook his head, once. "You'll do that on base, dude. Relax and enjoy the ride." He let his left leg dangle out of the loading door as the bird took off. "Thanks for the lift, fellas. You comin' back for these wimps?"

Their copilot turned his head a little, taking them both in from the corner of his eye. "That's the plan, sir. We didn't see anything interesting inbound. Anything we should know?"

"No sir," Jack responded immediately. "No sign of anti-aircraft hardware in town."

"That'll make a nice change," the copilot replied. "We'll have you back on the ground in eighteen."

"Appreciate ya," Jack responded, and the radios went quiet after that.

Mac knew the radio chatter was recorded, which might have had to do with Dalton's recalcitrance to talk, and he let it go and watched the tech in the cockpit. Colored weather maps, what looked like a radar warning receiver and infrared jammer, and a personnel locating system. This was a search and rescue helo.

While it was very cool, it was also very ridiculous. He and his overwatch were fine. The insurgents had already been taken into custody. Sure, maybe the four weren't alone, and the Rangers would be a good backup to have if they needed to defend the village, but there was clearly no sign of any other Taliban activity nearby, and more tellingly, the rest of the villagers had come out of their homes. If there had been more unwelcome visitors, they wouldn't have been so openly curious.

There was literally no reason at all they couldn't have just driven the damn humvee back to base. Even if the military wanted to edit his statement before they passed it to the ANPs.

It was . . . embarrassing. It felt like he'd done something wrong.

Mac closed his eyes. They never should have stopped.

Much as he wanted to enjoy the second helicopter ride of his life, MacGyver couldn't get rid of the knot of worry in his belly, and soon enough the FOB came into view. It looked a little different from above than the map in his head, and of course, of all the helipads on base, they landed right beside the TOC.

Which meant Colonel Martinez wanted to talk to them eighteen minutes ago.

He glanced at the loading door, where Jack was still camped out behind the copilot like he owned that piece of real estate, and his cover gave him a grin that was probably meant to be reassuring.

It wasn't.

Mac saw the copilot turn before he heard his voice come over the headset. "Sergeant, you and the specialist are wanted in the TOC ASAP. Been a pleasure, but you coulda been a little less chatty."

"Sorry, fellas, didn't see any reason for back seat drivin'," Jack replied, and Mac slipped off the helmet and unbuckled himself, heading out first. Jack stayed on board long enough to tell the pilot something else, and then his overwatch hopped off as well. He made a gesture with one hand, like he was patting air flat towards the ground, and Mac obediently crouched low as the helo immediately took off.

Once the wash and the sand dispersed, Dalton straightened, swinging his rifle to his front and removing first the mag, then the bullet from the chamber. He tucked the lone bullet into a lower vest pocket with an appreciative whistle.

"Always be good to them flyboys, at least to their faces. They'll pull you outta hell if they can."

"Not sure I'd describe that as hell," Mac replied, waiting impatiently for the Delta to square his weapon.

Jack gave him a surprised look, checking the safety on his pistol before motioning that Mac should start walking. "First time to the principal's office?"

If he had been in a better mood, he might have responded. As luck would have it, a corporal was walking out, and after a quick glance at Dalton, the man held open the door.

Mac had never actually set foot inside the Tactical Operations Center. It was really just a large, reinforced tent with rigid foam insulation sprayed on the outside to keep it cool and give it a little more stability. Inside, there were rows of eight foot tables, covered with laptops, maps, and a few phones. On the far wall were a couple ruggedized 70' flatscreens, one showing a satellite map of most of Afghanistan, and the other scrolling through text and tables. Men and women were scattered among the tables, but there was plenty of room along the back wall to stand, and Jack picked a corner and jerked his chin in a come hither motion.

The colonel was near the front, with his back to them, holding a headset to one ear and listening to a second lieutenant with the other, and Mac was beginning to think he had no idea they were there until he handed the headset to the louie and did an about-face, heading right for them.

Unlike on the field, proper decorum was expected on base, and he and Jack snapped to attention, side by side, almost exactly as they had done a little over three months ago, the last time Martinez had caught them doing something they shouldn't.

"I should have known it would be you two," Martinez growled, looking between them in exasperation. "Just when I thought I was rid of you for good, Dalton."

His cover wisely didn't volunteer any lip, and the colonel focused on Mac.

"You wanna tell me what the hell happened out there?"

Mac stared into the middle distance, pretty sure he wasn't actually cleared to look at much of anything in the TOC. "We were dispatched at 0430 to Nowrak to eval and disarm suspected IEDs-"

"Son, do I look like I have all day to listen to storytime?"

No. No he did not. "On the way back the 'vee started running hot. The sergeant suggested we park under cover of trees and check coolant levels –"

"I'm sure he did," Martinez cut him off. "Right on top of Shahjoy. Did you enjoy your visit?"

Mac was about to tell him, yes, right up until he was on the wrong end of a rifle, but it was pretty clear from the colonel's expression that he didn't really want an answer. Martinez rounded on Dalton.

"You sure it was just the four?"

"Yessir," Jack responded immediately.

"Do they have the village?"

"No sir." It was just as quick, and just as sure. "But if I may, sir, I respectfully suggest leaving Shahjoy on the liberties list."

"So we can have other personnel put at risk?"

"I wasn't at risk-" Mac began, only to have the full brunt of a Martinez Stare directed his way.

"Specialist, the first time I laid eyes on you, you were rolling around on the floor with this ground-pounder." Another dark look was cast towards Jack. "Going toe to toe with him showed brass, but also showed an obvious lack of brains." His barrel chest deflated just slightly. "I knew Al. He was a good officer, and a good friend. He told me you were smart."

Mac tried very hard not to flinch, and he wasn't sure how well he pulled it off.

"I have yet to see these smarts he was talking about. I paired you with Dalton here because I knew he'd keep you above ground. Do him a favor, and stop making it so goddamned hard."

There was only one answer to that. "Yessir."

The colonel gave him a long look. "Report to the MPI Office to give your statement. Your gear will be dropped off at your barracks. Dismissed."

He saluted on autopilot, well aware he was being dismissed only so Martinez could speak with Dalton without a lowly specialist in earshot. He didn't really remember the trip from the TOC to the MP's office, or of being fast-tracked to an interviewer. He told the story three times, as short as it was, every detail. The more he repeated it, the more cemented certain things became.

He hadn't seen any of those men. In the struggle, or perhaps after he restrained them, Dalton had pulled the scarves from the insurgents' faces. He didn't remember seeing any of them, not in the groups that watched him repairing things, not as other shoppers at the stalls.

He didn't know what vehicle or vehicles they had been driving. He hadn't seen them arrive.

The behavior of the cobbler, the warning look he'd given him, then the guilt . . . he'd been trying to tell him that something was wrong. The more Mac thought about it, the more certain he was that the toy had been crushed by one of the Taliban. It was the only thing the man had for Mac to fix, to slow him down long enough for Jack to get off the street.

He'd been, literally, oblivious. Utterly unaware that four men had been stalking him with the intention of spiriting him off to wherever they'd holed up. And if Dalton had been skimming diesel off the humvee, like he'd thought, he would be in Taliban hands right now. Lancer could have been dispatched the second Jack realized he was missing, and they would have gotten there eighteen minutes too late.

By the time he left the MPI office, it was only a little after 1400. He was rarely on base that early, and his stomach was tied up worse than it had been during the flight. For the first time in recent memory, he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be doing. Eventually he settled on returning to barracks, to wait for his gear and be ready to record the IED remnants into evidence before handing them over to the disposal officer.

The barracks were strangely empty. A couple guys were at the far end, working on reports, and didn't do more than look up when he came in. Without gear to break down and prep, and unable to write up his own reports without the evidence in hand, Mac went through half a dozen paperclips before he gave up and hit the showers.

By the time he returned, his gear was still nowhere to be seen, but a large figure was stretched out in the bunk reserved for Sgt Dalton, Jack W, and Mac wasn't entirely certain he wasn't asleep until he spoke.

"We're off the hook with Martinez."

Like that was what he was worried about. He tossed his damp towel over the end of his bunk to dry, and his dirty uniform into a laundry bag to deal with later.

"Been meaning to ask you . . ." Jack's voice trailed off, and he heard the older man lean up. "What's with the paper clips, man?"

He turned to find Jack holding up one of his pre-shower sculptures, the outline of a mule. Without a word he walked over and plucked it out of Jack's hand. "Did you hear back from Lancer?" he asked, instead of answering.

His cover let it go. "Yeah, they were on the horn when we walked into the TOC, actually. Tallies left 'em a grenade on a string. Even I coulda avoided that."

A grenade on a string was simply a hand grenade, placed unobtrusively but still in an area where it could do damage to soft targets, with a string connected to the pin, and to something else, like, say, a rivet on a humvee's driver-side door. Open the door, pull the string, pull the pin, boom.

Not the most complicated of IEDs. Probably all they'd had time for. Just enough to slow Jack down, or disable the 'vee to prevent pursuit.

"How did you know they were there?"

His cover gave him a long look. "Look, I know you're probably pissed, you feel like I used you-"

"As bait. You did." He said it dismissively. "How did you know they were there?"

A look of surprise crossed Dalton's face, but he finally answered. "Shahjoy's in one of the more liberal provinces. It was unusual to see all the women wearin' that kinda hajib. Some of the food, like the elephant ears, that's standard fare, but the dumplings, they're a pain in the ass to make. Those get made in big batches for things like weddings and babies. If a real celebration had been goin' on, there woulda been music and dancin', not the imam dronin' on and on through that radio you fixed."

Mac thought that through. "So you'd been there before."

"Yeah. Shahjoy's a well know pit stop. It's been friendly to us for years, and they earn a tidy living off us grunts. Saw you checkin' out that solar panel. That was courtesy of ol' Uncle Sam."

And all that told him was that Jack had noticed the villagers were acting a little off. "But how did you know it was _them_?"

His brown eyes were unusually keen. "Black strap of an AK peekin' out from under one guy's man jammies. Ridge of a weapon when one guy turned his back to me. One of those two signaled his friend, and didn't even try to be subtle about it. The fourth guy grabbed a woman that wasn't his wife by her elbow."

. . . those were very explicit details. Not something he'd noticed, and he had a near eidetic memory.

Mac blinked at him, a little nonplussed. "You saw all that?"

The operator's eyes hadn't lost that intense focus. " . . . yeah, kid. I see all that every time we cross the wire."

He didn't know what to say. " . . . is that from your Delta training?"

The way his overwatch looked at him made him a little uncomfortable. Finally, Jack let him go, laying back in his bunk. "Not all."

The way he said it, with such finality, it was clear he wasn't going to reveal anything else, but Mac pressed anyway, because he had to know. "So those people –"

"They'll be fine."

But he couldn't know that. Mac said as much.

Jack chuckled, low in his throat. "None of 'em said bupkiss. Hadda chat up half a dozen before I got anywhere. An operator takin' 'em down like I did, quiet-like, throws suspicion off the village. The Taliban didn't see a thing. Far as the T-Man's concerned, the village did their part, and we were just too good."

But it couldn't be that easy. If they were supposed to be 'celebrating' the Taliban entering their village, which Jack was suggesting, those four weren't the first to visit. There would have been others, a demand of tithe, a visit from an imam, other traffic –

Those four weren't the only men to visit that village. Weren't the only men who knew the Taliban wanted to turn it.

"Dude, are you okay?"

Mac hadn't realized he was pacing until he had to turn to see Jack's face. Not that he could see much of it; Dalton had one arm thrown carelessly over his eyes.

"I'm _fine_. I didn't need an extraction, we didn't need rangers as backup, we didn't need a damn helicopter –"

His cover was just suddenly _there_ , on his feet and right in Mac's face. "Kid, you and me need to get on the same page about this-"

Mac threw out his arms. "They never even _touched_ me, Jack! What do you think they did to the cobbler's wife? What they'll do to that little girl-"

His tee was grabbed by the collar, and Mac once again found himself about to throw a punch. Jack was right up in his face.

"What about what they were gonna do to _you_ , huh? You think about that?"

Irrelevant. He almost said it, apparently he didn't need to because Jack could see it in his eyes.

"You really think you're six foot tall and bulletproof, dontcha. I got news for you, _Angus_ , if they'd've gotten you out of that little village, the next time I saw ya your head would be a couple feet from the rest of you. Y'really want your parents watchin' _that_ on the news?"

It was extremely unlikely that he wouldn't have found a way to escape. And also irrelevant. He almost said as much, but he knew what his cover was getting at, and Martinez's words echoed in the tent.

_Do him a favor, and stop making it so goddamned hard._

"You remember when I told ya you wouldn't last two days in the sandbox without me? I was talkin' about _this._ "

"I know what I signed up for, and I understand the risks!" Mac shot back. "I never asked you to re-up!"

He might as well have just thrown the punch, from the look on Dalton's face. "I never said you did! But dammit, Mac, you have _got_ to start being more aware of what the fuck is happening around you!"

Mac bit back an angry retort. He knew he tended to focus on the problem, just like he'd been taught. Block out distractions. See the situation for what it was. That was his _job_. That was the reason EOD were assigned overwatch in the first place.

Worrying about the rest of it . . . that was his cover's job. That was Jack's job.

But maybe he wasn't appreciating how hard that job was. Or how good Jack was at it.

Or – maybe - how much of his own safety was still his own responsibility.

Jack mistook his silence for disagreement. "That's why I had us stop there in the first place! So you could get out from behind a damn bomb for once and actually _look_ at the people you're laying down your life for!"

It wasn't what he expected, and Jack didn't really look any less surprised to hear it.

"They're people, dude, not background! And if you let 'em, they'll tell you what's goin' on! I know it didn't seem that way today, and I'm damned sorry about that. Those villagers were in a tough spot they couldn't get out of. They didn't have it out for ya. They just wanna live their lives in peace, same as you and me." His cover released his tee shirt, but didn't step back. "They tried to tell you, man, but you just shut out everything goin' on around ya to do your thing."

"I know they're people, Jack! I'm not angry that they cooperated. I'm angry that we just pulled out and – and left them! You know how the cops work, the courts work here. They don't get to call in Rangers and an evac every time someone points a gun at them! Those men are gonna be back there in a week, in a month, and –"

"No they're not," Jack cut him off, with a surety that Mac just couldn't understand.

"How do you know that?!"

"Because I gave the village leader enough bribe money for the ANPs to make sure those four stay locked up the max processing period," he growled. "The Tallies will assume the money came from us in a more official capacity. They'll think base command authorized it, that the village is important enough to us strategically to increase security. So long as we leave Shahjoy on the list of friendlies, there'll be enough Army traffic through it to keep the Tallies off their backs the next four months, easy."

Which he wasn't sure he actually believed, but it brought him to another question he'd been wanting to ask. "Where did you get those Afghani notes, anyway?"

"What, you think I legit skim fuel?" Jack's expression was a cross between disappointed and something Mac couldn't quite put his finger on. "Weekly poker game. Though I can't really say I blame you for thinkin' what ya clearly ain't thinkin', seein' as you don't know me too well just yet."

A fact that was becoming increasingly clear to him.

"And maybe I ain't got you pegged yet, either," his cover allowed, taking a step back. "Here you are, more worked up about what'll happen to them than you are worried about your own damn hide. I'm beginning to think you don't have one single ounce of self-preservation in ya."

But that wasn't the point. "Why?" When it was clear Jack wasn't following, Mac pinned him with a look. "Why would you put up your own cash to do that? What do you get . . ." But then he realized he knew the answer. Jack got a village full of Afghans who could give him intelligence. Buying their safety gave him informants.

Dalton wasn't just Delta.

Noticing a sliver of black canvas on the shoulder of one person out of a hundred was not something most people could do. The things Jack had told him, the details he'd noticed, that wasn't something he'd learned in the Army. At least not without help. It wasn't like either of them had been on high alert when they'd walked into that village. Jack had been downright relaxed. What he'd seen, he'd seen because it was such an ingrained habit it happened automatically.

Technically the Delta division didn't exist. The US government denied the entire branch. Rumint had it that the CIA borrowed Deltas – and Rangers – as needed to complete intelligence operations. A month ago, he would have collapsed laughing if someone had suggested Dalton was such an operator, but now . . .

He wasn't as dumb as he acted. Mac had figured that out within the first couple weeks they'd been working together, but –

He hadn't really realized how badly he'd underestimated the man until today.

Mac had trailed off without finishing his question, but maybe the realization was written across his face, because his cover sighed, and then scrubbed a hand over his whiskers. "I really am sorry if I scared ya. I couldn't afford a firefight, not with so many civilians."

Mac lowered his voice a little as well. "Why didn't you just tell me? I would've been all for it."

The look he got was almost pitying. "Mac . . . you're damn near a genius, but you are the worst liar I have ever met."

He felt like that was probably an overstatement, but he didn't contradict the other man, and Jack shook his head.

"You were sittin' in the sand playin' with toys, happy as you could be. If I'd'a told you Taliban were in that village lookin' to snap you up, you can't tell me you wouldn't'a gone skittish as a long tailed cat in a room full'a rockin' chairs."

At least he could count on the Texan for his colorful colloquialisms.

"They'd a seen through you in a heartbeat, backed off, let us go, and that village would be under Tally control by the end of tonight."

It occurred to Mac, suddenly, that maybe he wasn't the only one doing the underestimating. "Fine. If I'm so bad at situational awareness, I'm not going to get any better at it until someone corrects me, right?"

The other man snorted. "I dunno if 'correct' is the right word-"

"Call it whatever you want. The next time you see something, just tell me. Bring it to my attention. I promise I won't get –" and he made a face, " _skittish_."

Jack's expression was doubtful. "Bud, I don't think I got enough years left in me to improve your situational awareness." He didn't actually mime air quotes, but they were implicit.

Mac thought about that a second, and then he smiled. "Was that a thinly veiled derogatory reference to my learning abilities . . . or your age?"

His cover broke out in a broad grin. "Whatever. Smartass." Jack turned and flopped back into his bunk, letting his boots hang off the edge to keep sand off the sheets. He threw an arm over his face again to block out the light. "Fine, kid. I'll do what I can, but frankly I think you're a lost cause."

The door to the barracks opened, and a private MacGyver didn't recognize ducked in, holding a familiar looking pack.

"Lookin' for A. MacGyver?"

"We got a MacGyver," Jack confirmed, before Mac could answer. "And lemme tell ya, one's plenty."

-M-

Not much to say here – I needed to establish the first time Mac realized Jack wasn't just the muscle. And it coincided nicely with also needing to establish how Mac ended up a top notch spy right out of the Army with pretty much zero experience, when Jack had been working with the CIA for, according to SEO9, about thirteen years by then. I figured Mac must have figured that out at some point, and maybe Jack gave him a few tips before they bailed on the Army for DXS.


	6. Cherry Slurpee

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

-M-

His feet landed in the soft sand with a satisfying thump, and MacGyver squinted against the bright white glare and looked beyond it, to where a hazy, deep blue sky met an impossibly flat line of deeper blue plain.

A hand reached down for his, and Angus absently took it. Her fingers were cool, almost the same temperature as the sand if he burrowed his toes deep enough, and he took a few steps after her, then kicked a little mound of sand. It scattered very unsatisfyingly, as soft as a blanket, and he stared at the stuff for a moment before another hand tapped his shoulder.

"Angus, do you know what a pendulum is?"

"No," he said, not bothering to look up, but he obediently reached up and his other hand was taken. His father's hand was warm, and held him firmly, as if they were about to cross a street. He looked then, checking both ways, but he only saw other people walking, carrying brightly colored towels and chairs and bags.

There weren't any vehicles, but ahead of him were wide tire tracks in the sand. He could see the tread pattern clearly in the soft stuff.

"A pendulum is a weight, attached to a pivot point so that it can swing," his father explained. "And when it gets swung away from its equilibrium point by an outside force, it becomes subject to a restoring force that accelerates it back towards that equilibrium point."

"And now daddy is going to try to explain angles and amplitude, because he's silly. The really important thing to remember is this."

Angus felt both his hands being lifted up higher, way over his head, and he laughed when he was picked right off his feet, his toes dangling in the sand.

"When you swing backwards, you accelerate forward." Angus giggled again as the hands holding his swung him back and forth. Every time they swung him back, he went faster and faster forward, up towards the sky.

"And if you put your toes in the sand –"

On the next forward swing, they lowered him just a little, and his feet plowed through a little hill of sand. It went flying, even higher than he did, scattering in all directions, and Angus laughed in delight.

"Then you can kick the sand _really_ far."

This repeated several more times, much to his joy, and he found that if he actually kicked when he came in contact with the sand, he was able to make it go even higher.

"Okay, son, that's enough." His father was using his 'settle down' tone, which was a huge disappointment, because this was _so much fun_! He tried to hang on as they set him back down on his feet, but neither hand held tightly enough to let him pull himself up, and Angus gave the next sand dune a kick, rearing his leg back really far to see if he could swing it the same way they had swung him.

It was way better than his first attempt, but not nearly as successful as the others.

"Careful not to kick sand on other people, okay?"

He nodded. They had walked far enough that they had caught up to other people, sitting out on towels, all watching the ocean.

The ocean was a large body of water that covered most of the Earth's surface. And even though it was a perfectly flat line against the horizon, it wasn't still at all.

It was moving.

His hands were released, so his parents could set down all the things they were carrying, and Angus stayed nearby, digging his toes into the sand and watching the water. It rushed towards him, like someone had just dumped out a giant bucket, but then it kind of rolled to a stop, and ran back the way it had come. Only to be shoved forward again. Like someone kept picking up the same cup of water, and tilting it back and forth.

Angus looked up and down the line of water, trying to figure out where that was happening.

Behind him, he heard a towel being shaken out, and the rattle of the bright green pail that had been teasing him from the trunk the whole drive. And it was a _long drive_ , it had been _hours_ and _hours_ and his parents had _refused_ to tell him what was in it. He turned, trying to be subtle, and found his mother sitting on a blue and white stripped towel, holding the green pail and frowning.

"Sweetie, I think the pail is broken." She shook it, and things rattled inside. "I guess we should take it back to the car."

"Oh, I think you might be right. That's a shame . . ." His father laid his green and white striped towel on the sand beside her, coming over and peering into the bucket.

Not wanting to be left out, Angus hurried over. "I can see!"

His mother, still frowning, looked deeper in to the bucket. "And all these little parts, I wonder what they're for . . ."

Angus ducked between his parents, almost colliding with his mother's shoulder, and wrapped his arms around her neck for stability as much as to see what she was looking at so intently. It was a light green pail, lighter than grass, and inside were a bright yellow shovel, and a bright orange little rake, and a little blue pail, and a little red pail.

His mother shifted the bucket so he could see inside more clearly, and he reached in and took out the little red pail. It looked like the turret on the medieval castle he had at home!

"It's not broken," he declared, turning it over in his hands, "See? It's a castle!"

"I see," she agreed solemnly. "But how can we have a castle with only one corner and one wall?"

Angus reached in and took out the little blue pail. It was shaped just like the wall of the castle, with flat teeth on top. He inspected them for a moment, turning them upside down. They sat in the sand very sturdily, but they were very light, and a breeze almost blew one over.

He needed it to be heavier.

Angus looked back into the pail, and his mother handed it to him. There was a shovel and a rake. There was no dirt, only sand, and he quickly got to work building a little hill, so the wind wouldn't blow and knock over the wall piece and turret piece.

By the time he'd constructed his little one-walled castle, his mother had stretched out on her towel, with another one rolled up behind her neck. She was wearing a blue swimming suit, and a very wide white-brimmed hat. Underneath it was still the navy towel she always wrapped around her head – to keep it from getting sunburnt, she said – and her legs were almost the same color as the sand.

Her smile, though, was big and wide, and Angus smiled back.

His father was no longer on his towel.

Angus glanced up, trying to pick him out of the other people. His father was wearing green swimming trunks, just like his, but there were a lot of blond men running around in green shorts. His gaze fell onto someone much more interesting – a boy. He was definitely older, and he was filling up a bucket with sand. As Angus watched, he up-ended the bucket lightning quick, and then he carefully picked the bucket up off the sand. The sand held the shape of the bucket!

Then the boy smashed his hand down into it, and it disintegrated back into tiny granules.

Angus glanced back down at the little red turret shaped pail, and then he scooped up part of his hill into it. When it was full, he used the shovel to flatten the top, so that it would sit on the ground all level, and then he flipped it over as fast as he could.

Then he waited a second, and carefully pulled up the pail.

For just a split second, it looked like a castle turret, but then the top part slipped apart and slid down the side, resulting in a rather misshapen mound of sand.

Angus chanced a glance at his mother, who was looking at the little mound with an equally puzzled expression.

"Hmm," she said.

"Hmm," he agreed.

He tried the turret, really packing the sand in this time, but ended up with the same result. The sand was way too soft and loose to hold the shape.

So how had that boy done it?

Angus glanced up, trying to pick out the other boy from the growing number of people around them, and he saw his father returning, with three styrofoam cups. All three had tiny colorful decorations poking out of the tops. The red one daddy gave to mommy, and the blue one was offered to him.

Angus dropped the turret and came over, taking it carefully. It was heavier than he thought it would be, and the blue decoration was a tiny little umbrella. The inside of the drink was red.

It was a Slurpee!

"Thank you!" Angus managed around the mouthful of flavored ice. His father had just settled back onto his towel, watching his mother, and Angus glanced between them. She was looking at the cup.

"Honey, I don't think I'm supposed to mix this with the -"

His daddy smiled at her. "It's a special occasion."

Angus hadn't quite figured out what the word 'occasion' meant, but they'd used it enough that he was starting to associate it with surprises and treats. Last week they had a special occasion and got hamburgers. And the week before that his parents had gotten dressed up and Wendy had come over to watch him while they went 'out' for a special occasion. They had stayed out so late that Angus had fallen asleep waiting for them, and when he woke up the next morning and raced into their bedroom to make sure they were there, they had both still been in the bed! They'd even let him come snuggle with them.

"Yeah! It's a special occasion!" Angus chirped, and he threw his arms wide, almost forgetting about the slurpee in his hand. "We're at the _beech_!"

His father gave him a stern look. "Try to keep it down to a dull roar, Angus."

"But it's the 'beech'," his mother repeated teasingly, and Angus grinned and sucked another centimeter down off the slurpee.

Her smile faltered, turning a little more serious, like his father's look, but then they tapped their cups together, and leaned in close, and Angus made his disgust known vocally and turned back to his aborted castle turret. He set the cup down in the sand, making sure it wouldn't spill, and set about trying to figure out how to make the sand stay.

It didn't really matter how hard he mashed it into the turret pail, or how gently and slowly he took the pail off the sand, or even how hard he slammed it down when he upended it. In fact, the harder he did that, the faster it fell apart. He'd picked up his cup for a second time before he noticed.

Sand was sticking to the bottom of it.

Angus brushed the clumping sand off the bottom of it, which then stuck to his fingers, and he absently wiped them off on his arm to continue drinking his slurpee before he realized that the sand was sticky.

He glanced down. It was the same sand. All the sand around him looked exactly the same. He set the cup down, then picked it back up, but no new sand stuck to it. He went to grab the sticky sand off his arm, but it disintegrated as he rubbed it, and fell back to the ground.

"I think our little genius has figured it out."

Angus glanced up at his parents, who were still sitting close together, watching him, and he frowned at them, suddenly embarrassed.

"Stop looking at me!" he complained, and turned his back a little, staring at the turret in his hands.

He had to make the sand sticky. And the only sticky sand had been on the bottom of his cup.

Angus glanced at the cup again, and picked it back up, looking. A little sand was sticking to the side. He wiped off the sand, and a little drop of water that was collecting on the side of the cool styrofoam.

Mud.

If you mixed water and dirt, it made mud, which was _way_ stickier than just dirt! But too much water made it not sticky at all. Otherwise baths wouldn't work.

So he needed to add water. Just not a lot of it.

Angus looked at the big pail, and then at the ocean. There was definitely plenty of water nearby . . .

"I do believe you're right," his father said, and then cleared his throat. "Do you want to go down to the water, Angus?"

He watched it a second, then turned back and nodded, and his father untangled his long, thin legs and stood up. "How about you leave the pail for now, and we'll go observe the waves." Then he turned to mommy, and offered her a hand.

His mother shook her head. "No, I – I can't."

His father's smile faltered. "Are you tired? We can –"

"No, no, don't be silly! We just got here." She beamed up at him. "It's a gorgeous day, and the sun feels wonderful. Go. Go play. I'll keep the towel thieves away."

Angus blinked at both of them, and then glanced around at the other people. There were lots of them, all walking around, some with towels, some without. And unlike his parents, who were wearing swimming suits that matched their towels – and his mommy always wrote their name on everything, but he couldn't tell –

"Your mother's teasing, Angus. No one's going to steal our towels." His father was just behind him, and ruffled his hair. "Let's go check out those waves."

He obediently left the pail, shovel, rake, and castle pieces and slogged through the sand beside his father. They passed several other people, also stretched out on towels, and Angus scanned them for their tags, and the black marker that would have their names.

"Do you know what makes ocean waves?"

Angus shook his head, and focused on the water. Even though it was clearly blue, when it spilled up the beach, it looked white and bubbly, and then when it retreated it looked brown, like the sand. There were things floating in it too, brown and green like snakes.

"Do you know what makes tree branches move?"

He felt himself nodding. "The wind."

"That's right." They stopped right where the sand went from laying in dunes to being very smooth and flat. As Angus watched, the water rushed over, spilling up the sand, and it stopped a few inches from his toes.

"It's the same with water. The wind is what makes the water move in waves."

Confused, Angus looked up at his father, who was staring out at the ocean with a strange expression on his face. "The energy in the wind transfers to the surface of the water through friction. You see, the wind blows across the surface, and just like with leaves, or grass, or little boys," and he glanced down at him, "molecules of air collide with molecules of water, and they push against one another."

He didn't really understand half of what his father said, and sometimes he worried that he disappointed his father when that happened, but he liked to listen to him explain things. He was always so earnest, and he always knew the answer to every question.

Angus turned back to the ocean, feeling the breeze on his face, and he watched the next wave come towards them. This one came closer, and the water rushed over his feet.

Angus yelped, and grabbed his father's hand. "Cold!"

He heard his father's low chuckle. "You think so?"

"Yeah!" He danced away from the next wave, racing it backwards as it approached – but not letting go of his father's hand. "It's _freezing_!"

"So it's as cold as your slurpee?"

Angus thought about a second. "No."

"No. So it must be warmer than freezing."

"Not a _lot_ ," Angus muttered.

"You don't want to get in it?"

Another wave came by, and Angus moved so just his toes got barely touched. It wasn't nearly as cold as it had first felt, but it was certainly cold.

"All of those people seem to like it."

He raised his eyes, looking at all the people in the water. He could hear them laughing and talking. Further out, some people seemed to be swimming, but the rest were standing in waist-deep water, squealing and laughing when a wave would come and slap into them.

"How come it's so cold, when the sun is so hot?"

He heard his father gust out a sigh. "You know when you get a glass of water from the sink?"

Angus squinted up at him and nodded.

"If you use the cold water tap, the water comes out cool, doesn't it."

He nodded again.

"But if you let that glass of water sit on the table for a while, what happens?"

He gave that some thought. "Then you tell me to finish drinking it."

His father's teaching face flickered momentarily. "I do. And when you do drink the rest of it, is it as cool as it was when it first came out of the faucet?"

He shook his head.

"Why do you think that is?"

Angus squirmed a little, and dug his toes into the wet sand. It was definitely too wet to make a good castle.

"It warms up because the air is warmer than the water, and some of the heat energy in the air is transferred into the glass. How quickly that happens depends on the thermal conductivity of the materials in question, the surface area of the objects in contact, the temperature difference between them . . ." He trailed off. "And the Pacific is much colder than the Atlantic because the ocean's currents are traveling from the Arctic – the North Pole."

Angus looked at the water with new eyes. "It's from the North Pole?"

"Oh yes. This water has traveled all over the world."

Santa could have swum in this water.

The next wave was a big one, and it washed over his feet again, but this time it didn't feel nearly as cold as it had the first time. He inched forward a step, and his father followed him.

"Does it rain on the ocean?"

His father looked out across the water. "What do you think?"

Angus saw some fluffy white clouds, way out on the horizon. "Yes?"

"Yes. It rains almost everywhere on Earth. And the ocean covers 71% of the entire surface of the earth."

"So it rains a lot," Angus decided. He took another step. The water rushed up around his shins, and he felt the sand shift underneath his feet as the water retreated.

It reminded him of the other things he'd seen in the water. "How many fish are there?"

"Well, kiddo, we don't really know. The ocean is roughly thirty six thousand feet deep in the Mariana Trench. Do you know what Mt. Everest looks like?"

Angus took another step into the water, and his father followed him.

"If you took that mountain, and you turned it upside down and put it in the ocean, it wouldn't touch the bottom."

He blinked up at his father with wide eyes. Then he hung onto his hand a little tighter.

His father didn't seem to notice. "We've only explored maybe 8% of the oceans of the world. Now, if the oceans cover 71% of the earth, and we've only explored 8% of the ocean, how many percent of the ocean remains for _you_ to explore?"

Angus wasn't entire sure he wanted to explore any more of _this_ one, but he took another few steps in. The water was at his shins all the time now, and the waves brought it up all the way to his waist. He _really_ didn't like the way the sand shifted under his feet.

"Well, son?"

Angus grabbed onto his father's hand tighter still. "If I fall in, will I float?"

"Yes." His father's voice was quite sure. "You would float. Do you want to see?"

A higher wave was sweeping up, Angus could see that it was taller than some of the others, and he clung to his father's leg and braced himself. It splashed all the way up to his chest, and Angus spluttered.

It didn't taste like bathwater at all. It was salty.

His father reached down and picked him up, and Angus wrapped his arms around his father's neck and clung to him. From his new perch, the water barely touched his feet, and when it came by, it didn't seem to affect his father at all.

"What's wrong, Angus? There's nothing to be afraid of."

"There's sharks," he said, his voice small. If the ocean was so big and so wide and so deep, even if he floated at the top of it, no one knew how many sharks were in it. It wasn't clear, so he couldn't see what was in it. He couldn't even see his father's feet in the water.

"Oh, sharks? Sharks are nothing to be afraid of."

Angus leaned away just to look at his father incredulously. "They have huge teeth!"

"They should. They're dinosaurs."

Angus stared at him. "Nuh-uh."

"Nuh-uh isn't a word, Angus. It's no. And don't contradict."

He was still too scared to let go of daddy, so he didn't say anything else, even though _everyone_ knew the dinosaurs had all been wiped out by an asteroid a bajillion years ago.

"Sharks haven't changed much since the Silurian Period. A lot of life survived in the oceans, even though life on the surface was wiped out by various extinction events. There are five that we know of, and the sixth one is happening right now."

He didn't know what extinction meant, though he had heard it mentioned related to dinosaurs, and he just stared at his father. "So . . . all the sharks are really old?"

His father laughed; he could feel it rumble out of his chest. "No, Angus. Sharks are so well evolved, even though the world changed around them, they were able to adapt. Do you know what adapting is?"

Water lapped at his feet, but the waves were no match for his father, and Angus looked over his shoulder, trying to pick out his mom. "No."

He felt his father sigh. "Adapting is making adjustments to meet new conditions. Like right now. You're adapting to the cold water."

To make his point, his father took several more steps into the ocean. The water came up to his father's chest, splashing up against his back, but this time it didn't frighten him. His father was a firm presence, warm despite the cool water, holding him up.

"When you get a little older, we'll give you swimming lessons. And you'll have to adapt the way you move from walking on the ground to swimming through the water."

He father shifted him to a hip, and Angus permitted it, so that he was only hanging onto his father with one arm – but still tightly. They watched the next wave coming up.

"This one looks like a big one," his father observed. "If it comes up to your face, hold your breath and close your eyes, just like you do in the tub. Okay?"

He nodded a little, watching the wave come closer, and closer, and swell up higher, and higher, and then it was there, and Angus squeezed his eyes shut and hung onto his father. Daddy's strong arm held him firmly, he stayed grounded and didn't move away like the sand did. The water was gone almost as fast as it came, like someone had dumped a bucket of water over him, and Angus shook the water out of his eyes and squinted them open.

His father was completely soaked, his hair flat against his head, and he was wearing a lopsided grin. "Well, that wave was higher than I originally thought," he said.

Angus looked at him, then burst out giggling.

His father chuckled as well, and Angus ducked his against his father's shoulder. The ocean had a tangy odor to it, but underneath it he smelled sunscreen and the same scent that was on his father's pillow – kind of citrusy and spicy.

"Bet that wasn't as scary as you thought it was going to be."

Mutely, he shook his head into his father's neck.

The next wave was much smaller, and he felt his father's arm loosen around him as it hit. There was a strange little sensation of bobbing up and down, and Angus scrambled to get his arm back around his father's neck, but he found that his father's arm hadn't gone far, and the water swept him back into it.

"See? You floated."

It took several more tries before he was comfortable with that, but his father had been right. He floated. He even pushed himself away from daddy, hanging onto his arm but letting his legs go free in the water, and even though he couldn't touch the bottom, and the next wave came, he bobbed up with it, and then dropped down when the water dropped down.

Angus beamed up at his father. "I floated!"

"You weigh a lot less than the water your body displaces. As long as that constant remains true, you're always going to float."

It wasn't quite the celebration that he felt like he deserved, but Angus was still very proud of himself. "I 'dapted!"

"You _adapted_ ," his father corrected. "And just think. if you had been too afraid to come out here with me, you never would have known that it wasn't as scary as you thought it was going to be."

Angus looked up, watching for the next wave, almost wishing it was a bigger one. That gave him a better rise and drop when he floated.

"Son . . . you and I, we're going to have to adapt to some changes soon."

The wave came and went, and Angus floated there, still hanging into his father's arm. His daddy was looking out at the horizon. "Just like this. It's not going to be as scary as it seems."

Angus followed his gaze, but all he saw was another wave. It didn't look too big.

"It's not scary," he told his father.

His father smiled, but it looked sad. "Not so worried about the sharks anymore?"

"Dinosaurs," Angus corrected. His father broke into a startled laugh.

"So dinosaurs aren't as scary as sharks?"

Angus wasn't sure why he had made his father laugh, but it didn't happen as often as it used to, and he really liked it. "Nope."

His father's expression settled back into something closer to stern. "Nope is hardly better than 'nuh-uh.'"

Angus shrugged. "Mommy says it."

His father's expression changed, then, but Angus barely had any time to look at it before water rushed over them, into his mouth, into his nose. He felt his father's arms wrap around him tightly, pulling him in a different direction than the rushing water, and then his head broke the surface. Angus shook his head and coughed out the water.

It still tasted salty. And a little like boogers. He didn't like it.

A strong hand rubbed his back. "You okay, Angus?"

He shook his head, trying to get the water out of his eyes. "I'm okay." He said it quickly, afraid that anything else was the wrong answer. His father almost never picked him up anymore, almost never laughed anymore, and he wanted to stay there forever.

It was a special occasion.

And even though he said he was okay, his father started walking back towards the shore, still holding him. "Let's get out and warm up a little. I bet your mother would love to help us build a sandcastle."

Angus tightened his arms a little. "Yeah. Mommy's having a good day today."

He felt a little shudder run through his father's chest. "Yes she is." His voice was brisk.

He knew he was going to be put down as soon as the water was shallow enough, and Angus struggled to find a reason to stay where he was. "Can we come back tomorrow?"

His father's head turned towards him a little, a few droplets of warm water rolling off his face. "You like the beach?"

Angus nodded. "I like this."

He felt his father shiver a little. "I do too, son." But then the arms around him loosened, and his voice got stronger again. "Down you go, Angus. Why don't you run and get your pail, and we'll fill it up."

Despite the fact that he didn't let go, his father pulled his arms loose and let him slither to the ground. The water was only up to his shins, and without his father to lean against, the breeze seemed colder than the water. His father turned around, looking back out towards the ocean, which meant it was the end of the conversation, and Angus reluctantly splashed out of the water, looking for his mother, and wondering why he suddenly wanted to cry.

"Angus."

He looked up, surprised to find Jack standing at his shoulder. The man's wetsuit top was still hanging from his waist, and his medallion picked up the rising sun in a perfect reflection of brilliant gold.

"You okay?"

Mac shook himself, then reached back and grabbed the long neoprene zipper pull, zipping up his own shorty. The board felt heavy but well-balanced under his arm, and the waves were absolutely perfect. Glassy, beautiful smooth surface, just a touch of spray coming off the lip, gorgeous hollow a-frame on every third one.

"Better than okay." He gave his partner a cock-eyed grin. "It's crankin' out there, dude."

Jack winced at the far-too-perfect surfer imitation. "Man, I feel like you just dropped thirty IQ points right there."

"Then he's still got thirty more than you," Bozer observed, coming up behind them already fully suited up. He clapped Mac on the back, and the blond grinned wider.

"Let's do it. Surf's up!"

Then he whooped and sprinted straight into the spray.

Jack watched him go with a sour expression, while Bozer started chuckling. "Yep. That's Mac."

Before Bozer could join him, Jack put out a hand. "Just . . . to be clear here, Mac's never had, I dunno, a near drownin' incident or somethin'?"

Wilt's eyebrows rose in confusion, and he dropped one end of his surfboard to the sand, leaning on it a little. "Uh . . . no, not that I know of . . ." But then his face shrank back down to its normal size. "Oh, you mean his whole 'communin' with the sea spirits' thing?"

Jack gestured. "The thousand yard stare at the horizon?"

But Bozer was just nodding. "Yeah. Have you never seen him do that? Every time we come to the beach, he watches the waves for a few minutes. Sometimes you'll catch him doin' it at the fire pit, too, watching the flames, but literally _every_ time we hit the beach. I just give him a few to do whatever he's doin', and he's good." Bozer indicated Mac, who was now far out enough that he was flat on the board, paddling out past the break.

"And if we don't follow him, he's gonna catch every good wave and all we're gonna get is chowder."

-M-

I thought I would wrap this one up with something a little cute, a little sentimental, and as close as I can ever get the Turkey Day universe to canon now that we've all seen the Season Two finale. Turkey Day is definitely its own little AU now, and my guess on Oversight was wrong. Whoops.

I had been planning to cover Matty and Jack's falling out as a Trimming, so that I didn't have to spell it out in the sequel, but after plotting the sequel out chronologically, I realized that I can tell the entire Matty/Jack falling out, possibly better, in the Turkey Day sequel itself. So this is the last Trimming, barring anything else popping to mind (or requested.)

I'm also not going to make you wait until NaNoWriMo for that sequel, mainly because I'm afraid Turkey Day will be WAY far off canon by the time the third season starts, so the next thing you see from me will either be the sequel itself, or a standalone story like Ground Rules.


	7. Root Beer

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

 **Content Warnings** : Some coarse language and descriptions of torture.

-M-

**AUSTRALIAN OUTBACK**

There was something about it, some flavor to the pain that cut through everything else, and he knew it instantly, that it wasn't the bite of a bullet or a blade. He kicked out blindly with his left foot, sending sand flying as he squeezed off another two rounds, and only then did he dare to glance down, and caught just a glimpse of something brown and olive green taking off into the scraggily blackberry scrub behind him.

That was about the time Saito became unquestionably certain they were all going to die.

MacGyver was pinned down behind a sad little copse of trees, fiddling with his walkie talkie, and Akatsutsumi Saito whipped off his canvas belt, lashed it tightly around his left leg, just below the knee, and wasted another couple rounds keeping the shooters occupied before he got it tied off as tight as he dared.

Weaponless – and now com-less, since the walkie was in pieces – Dalton's partner was a sitting duck, and Saito weighed distances and odds before he cursed, then popped up out of cover. "MacGyver, _go_!"

The blond looked over at him in alarm, and Saito ducked back as the last two guys holding them off opened fire. He knew the analyst could see that he hadn't been hit, but Saito let out a cry anyway, letting the cartel boys fire a few more shots before they'd convinced themselves that they'd hit him, and would start advancing.

The analyst's eyes were wide, and his fingers started moving even faster. "I just need a few more seconds!" he hissed back, as loudly as he dared.

Saito gave him a furious shake of the head, then took his left hand off his pistol grip and pointed emphatically towards the Land Rover, about a hundred yards away, hidden by the hills and bramble.

 _Move out!_ he mouthed silently, and MacGyver frowned at him, and promptly went back to the walkie-talkie.

Saito swore again but the young man completely ignored him. Still muttering curses, this time in his mother tongue, Saito took a deep, cleansing breath, leaned out from around the thick post, and picked off the two figures, right there in the open on the dusty road. Neither managed to get off another shot.

MacGyver didn't even look up as Saito crossed the drive towards him, he just mashed the battery back into the half-trashed walkie and pressed the transmit button. The walkie emitted a high-frequency tone, and MacGyver winced and cranked down the volume on the device. Then he warily leaned out of his cover, his eyes on the convoy now almost half a klick away.

Saito followed his gaze, if only to determine how much of a head start the scumbags had, and unbelievably, two of the three cars veered wildly off the dirt road. The first one recovered, but the middle truck went right into the rainwater gully, slamming to a stop. MacGyver took off like a shot, right for it.

The Asian agent briefly considered winging the moron, but instead turned and loped for the Land Rover. By the time he made the door – and he didn't have the damn keys, Dalton had driven – his left calf was starting to cramp like it meant it. Venom was gonna turn it into soup, but he wasn't going to be around long enough to really experience that and he knew it. It took him less than ten seconds to hotwire the rover, and he whipped it around the hill until he had eyes on the convoy.

Losing one of the vehicles was predictably not enough. Dalton had taken advantage but the third vehicle had been unaffected, and he could see them muscling Jack back under control. His younger partner was a decent sprinter, but there'd been no chance. The convoy was back in motion before MacGyver could get within a hundred yards of it. They didn't even bother shooting at him.

Saito took the terrain as fast as the vehicle could, crunching to a halt behind the analyst, who had his hands on his knees as he gulped down air. Running in this heat was, remarkably, one of the least stupid things he'd done in the last hour, and Saito resisted the urge to cuff him on the back of the head as a gasping MacGyver clambered into the Land Rover.

"If you can get me – close enough to them – I can get a tracker on their vehicle-" He held something in his fist that was circuit board green, that Saito was fairly sure had once been inside the trashed walkie. Saito glared at him for a second, then got a rudimentary course on the convoy, threw the rover back into gear, and took off due east.

Not in the direction the convoy was retreating. With Jack Dalton still in their care.

MacGyver was only quiet a moment. "What are you doing-"

"They own the police and the territory parliament, or enough of it anyway." And of course Dalton had their only sat phone, and there were no cell towers anywhere nearby. This was going down in the middle of the Australian Outback for a reason. "Every shire, roadhouse, and hostel in this territory is compromised. I gotta get you to the Northern Territory, from there you can get a secure phone and get him some goddamn backup."

If Dalton lived that long. He was kind of a smartass. Saito wasn't sure how long it would take, and how patient these guys were.

They'd want to know what he knew. This was the birthing of a drug empire, not the grade school years. They'd only just stumbled upon the combination of high grade Afghan heroin and an herbal arthritis pain remedy, with the plant only found in Australia. The combination extended the high of the heroin significantly, and also handled some deleterious effects of the heroin itself, meaning the addicts could live longer to buy more. It was a gold mine to the Asian cartels, that had been fighting with heroin purity since the 90s.

They'd want to know every detail of Dalton's information, agency, contacts, and reach. They'd keep him alive however long it took to find out who had sold them out. They might even give him a sample of the goods if they thought it'd make him talk.

Not that Jack Dalton needed an excuse to talk. Saito almost smiled at the thought. He had a good two-three days in him, but after that, he'd be in trouble. That was enough time.

Enough time to get his idiot of a partner the backup he'd need to successfully save Dalton and salvage the op.

He could do this.

The only problem was, the closest uncompromised phone was a full gas tank from their current position, and they only had two-thirds.

And he'd be dead in a little over half an hour, so, there was that.

MacGyver wasn't having it. "We can still catch up-"

"And do what?" he inquired coldly, effectively shutting the young man down. "If you'd taken the gun and backed me up they wouldn't have Jack in the first place." The other agent's expression shifted, then, from confusion to something a little harder to decipher, and Saito put his eyes back on the road. Things were already getting a little blurry as the headache set in.

Dammit.

"That's my fault. I thought you were an agent, not an analyst. So listen up. You are going to continue up this highway until you make the Northern Territory. You are only to stop if there's an opportunity for fuel. When you get there, you're going to –"

"And what about you?" the analyst challenged, parroting his tone.

Saito glanced down at his leg, surprised that he didn't see any blood spotting through the fabric. The venom would prevent the wound from coagulating, but apparently his impromptu tourniquet was helping at least a little.

"I'm not going to be able to help you," he said shortly. "Now _shut the fuck up_ and take notes -"

". . . you were hit." It didn't seem like the dude realized he'd interrupted, or else he didn't care. His eyes were now on Saito's left knee, where the canvas was knotted, and he was already undoing his seatbelt. "How bad-"

"Inland taipan. Nothing you can do." He said it dismissively, but the guy was already reclining his seat and squirming into the back. "Dammit, MacGyver, _listen_ to me. Those guys didn't tag you because we have nothing on them. Wherever they're manufacturing this stuff, it's at least fifty miles from the meet point, and they're going to pull up stakes and move as soon as they get back with Dalton. Terrain like this, they'll have radar and see an air assault or a drone coming the second you take off. Make _sure_ Thornton understands that."

Land assault wasn't a much better option. Keeping things remote kept them in the outback, far into 'the bush' as the locals called it, and allowed them to round up as much aboriginal labor as they had guns to control. There would be hostages, and ones the local Australians wouldn't be heartbroken to lose. And the herb they were harvesting grew wild all over the largely uninhabited Western territory. There were no neat, carefully cultivated green squares to spot from satellite. They were going to cover the ground like nomads, setting up temporary camps, cleaning out an area, and moving on. A few burlap tents and they could hide the entire operation in this brown nothingness.

If Dalton didn't find a way to signal them, it was going to take every minute of those three days to find him.

"Play the tourist card, be polite but unmemorable. You get stopped, stick to your cover."

"Pull over," MacGyver ordered, as if he actually expected to be obeyed, and Saito glared at him in the rearview mirror. All he could see was a khaki-colored ass waving around as the guy rifled through the supplies in the back of the rover.

"Is English your second language?" Saito inquired frostily. "There is nothing you can do-"

"Inland taipans are considered the most venomous snakes on earth because the venom is extremely potent, and extremely specialized to take mammals down – fast," the younger man snapped back over his shoulder. "That tourniquet is useless, we need to replace it with a pressure bandage –"

Saito ground his teeth. Of course the guy was feeling guilty, he was the damn reason they were in this mess. "One bite has enough venom to kill a hundred men. It's _over_. If we stop at a hospital, they will find us, and they will take us. Even if they didn't, there's no place within an hour's drive of here that can do anything about it. _Leave it._ "

With any luck, he'd pass out before the paralysis got to his lungs. It was going to be unpleasant, but at least it'd be short. All he could do now was put some much-needed distance between them and the cartel. Give the kid a head start.

"That may be true," the young man replied, finally squirming his way back into the front seat, "but the thing that's going to kill you first is respiratory failure, and we can do something about that. Hold still." Without another word, the little shit stabbed him in the chest with a needle.

Saito very nearly hit him; once he realized what was happening – and that it was a syringe, meaning they'd had something in the first aid kit the analyst thought would help - Saito gave the other man a scathing glare. He got a crooked half-grin in response.

Like it was all a damn game.

"Anti-venom. It's generic, but it'll buy us a little time." He withdrew the syringe once the contents had been administered, capped it, and placed it in the center console. "Now pull over."

They were still potentially close enough to turn around and follow the convoy, which was exactly what Dalton's partner wanted to do. And it would get him killed.

"That was a waste of meds," Saito growled, not letting up on the accelerator for a moment, "and if you touch me again, I'll kill you myself."

The younger man was utterly unfazed, and he promptly went for the glove box, rooting around inside. "You were bitten at least ten minutes ago, right? You're going to develop a headache, if you haven't already, and photophobia, so unless you want to die in a car crash, pull over."

MacGyver wasn't wrong, and a little nausea was making itself known as well, but he knew he had at least ten more minutes of alert driving in him. "If you go back for Jack now, you will die. Do you not get that?"

The young analyst glanced over at him. "Right now I'm a little more worried about you."

Without a sound, without a hitch in the engine, the Land Rover completely died.

Saito guided it to the side of the road, hand going for the wires he'd pulled free to see if they'd disconnected - before he caught a glimpse of the very same yellow and green wires dangling as MacGyver closed the glove box, and realization came as it clicked closed.

They were _definitely_ going to die.

"You goddamn idiot."

The half-grin spread to the other corner of his face. "Let's wrap that leg."

But it didn't stop there. Once MacGyver applied the pressure bandage, they had to release the tourniquet by degrees. No amount of arguing with the analyst did him any good, and by the time he was ready to pull a gun to get them back in the car, Saito realized he was no longer competent to drive.

And MacGyver didn't seem that antsy to get back in, either. The convoy was well and truly gone, but the analyst was still digging around in the trunk. Saito was sitting up against the rear tire in what little shade there was, he couldn't see what Jack's partner was up to, and he kept his breathing and pulse slow and steady.

"How you doing?" came the muffled question, still inside the rover. Saito heard the distinctive sound of duct tape ripping.

From what he could tell, the anti-venom wasn't doing a damn thing. "Dude, get in the car and go. You've done what you can, and we're wasting time." Not to mention it was soon going to be high noon, and if they thought it was hot now, it was going to be unbearable in a few hours. "You don't have the fuel to run the A/C. It's time to move out."

"-almost." It sounded distracted, and a piece of hard plastic was snapped in two.

Saito closed his eyes, half in irritation, half in discomfort. "Weren't you in the Army?"

There was a delayed half-laugh. "I was," the young man admitted, and an empty plastic bottle crinkled for an extended amount of time. "EOD."

It seemed like Jack had told him that. "You get yourself a dishonorable discharge for failure to follow orders?"

Another half-laugh, then he apparently stopped crumpling the bottle. Guess he'd squeezed all the water out of it. "Let's just say I did a lot of push-ups."

"Never would have guessed." Talking was winding him slightly, and Saito took an intentionally deep breath. Then he reached behind himself, braced both his elbows on the running board, and levered himself onto his feet. He was definitely weak; his legs were not happy about supporting his weight, and his left was now cramping all the way up to his hip.

Anti-venom wasn't going to cut it. Just like he'd said. What he needed was an intensive care unit, a ventilator, and a steady drip of adrenaline, and there was no way in hell Jack's partner had packed all of that, even if he'd had the foresight to stock the first aid kit with snakebite antivenom.

A sweating blond head peered around the side of the rover. "Wait, almost done-"

"I wait any longer and I'm not getting up," Saito muttered. "I don't give a shit what you're doing, we're leaving."

Even looking through the side window, he couldn't figure out what the dude was doing. It looked like he had the tire inflator kit out, but he'd attached clear tubing to it – and where he'd gotten that, Saito had no idea – that passed through a black plastic housing with a rubber membrane on one end, too duct-taped together to really tell what it did, and terminated in another length of clear tubing. It was this he was wiping down with an alcohol pad, but he had eyes only for the man glaring at him.

"You need to keep that leg immobilized –"

Like it was going to make a damn bit of difference. "Then I'll do that in the rover. We spend any more time here, we'll both die of lead poisoning before anything else."

The younger man frowned at him, but made wrapping up motions, and Saito limped to the passenger side and settled in. He popped open the glove box and twisted the appropriate wires back together, noting that they had been cut, rather than ripped, and cast his mind back to the red Swiss army knife he'd seen sitting next to the frankensteined compressor.

And that triggered a memory, as well.

MacGyver pulled open the driver side door, and Saito debated hiding his shaking hands before he decided it was just too much effort. The guy knew he was dying, no point. He'd figured the analyst would be a little more freaked out, his partner in enemy hands, his only backup soon to bail on him, but he couldn't help but notice the dude's fingers were dead steady as he twisted the appropriate wires together under the dash.

Right. EOD. Clearly he could handle stress.

As if he sensed the visual inspection, MacGyver turned and looked at him, his expression once again hard to decipher.

"One more thing – I'm gonna need your watch."

He was gonna need a lot more than that. "Hell, take whatever you want." Then he thought better of that, and painfully freed his primary firearm from his back holster. He offered it to the analyst, who made no move to accept it.

This, he had no more tolerance for. If MacGyver had taken it the first time it was offered to him, they would have at the very least gotten Jack out of that heroin sale gone wrong. The time to be squeamish about taking a life was long past. "Take the goddamn gun."

MacGyver gave him a long look, then reached out. But instead of taking the gun, the analyst turned his wrist and relieved him of his watch. "Hang onto that," he murmured as he nimbly undid the buckle. "I'm gonna get you through this, Saito, and you'll need it when we go get Jack and that intel."

Saito let him take the watch, then slammed the gun onto the rigged tire inflator that MacGyver had put on the center console. "I owe your partner my life," he forced through clenched teeth, hating that he was getting winded again. "If I can't save him, I'm sure as hell not leaving you helpless. Now _what_ is the fucking _problem_ here?"

MacGyver shook his head, his voice remarkably calm as he popped the back off the tac watch. "I don't like guns very much," he said simply.

No kidding. "You like dying? Let me tell you . . from personal experience, it's not great."

The other man winced a little, then teased the rubber gasket off the watch insides, reaching into the thigh pocket of his cargo pants and pulling free the multitool. Ignoring the gun, he fished two thin wires out of his jerry-rigged inflator, then pressed them firmly against the watch circuitry. Apparently finally happy, he then tucked it all into the console between them – leaving the gun infuriatingly where it was - and put the rover in gear.

"I told you, I'll get you through this." He leaned forward, squinting up through the windshield at the sun. "Hospitals may be out, but they're not the only places that stock antivenom, or medical supplies. There's a veterinary clinic and wildlife sanctuary in the Toolonga Nature Reserve. If we can make that we can get you stabilized."

They were hours from Toolonga. It was also west of their current location.

Back towards the coast. It was already uncertain whether they had enough fuel to make the Northern Territory, if he backtracked it was a certainty.

"You do that, all three of us die out here in this desert." As far as he could remember, there was no settlement between the nature reserve and their current position, which meant no place to purchase gas or water, no way to call for help.

On the plus side, the cartel was as unlikely to find them as anyone else.

MacGyver shook his head, then took off – going easy on the accelerator. "Northern Territory's off the table, I've already done the math. Given the heat we're going to experience later this afternoon, on top of the prevailing winds, we have no chance. And I can't carry you through that much desert without making you a lot worse. This is our only shot."

Well, Jack had told him his partner was a stubborn SOB, and that, at least, was turning out to be completely true. "I'm done. Accept it and move on."

The crooked grin was back. "Yeah, I'm not very good at doing that. One of my many character flaws."

After that, Saito saved his breath for living as long as he possibly could.

That didn't turn out to be a whole lot longer.

At first the paralysis crept up on him, because the pain in his head and body, and his sudden sensitivity to light was extremely distracting. They hadn't eaten since breakfast, so his nausea never really went anywhere. By the time he realized his blood pressure was tanking, it was far too late to warn the kid, but he blearily decided that was probably for the best. He wasn't gasping, he couldn't. Unless he woke up again, he was going to die relatively quietly, and that would probably be easier on the young man than the alternative.

But pain woke him. He was gagging weakly, he couldn't even shake his head a little, couldn't get away. Suffocating. Dying for air. He couldn't take a breath any more than he could escape the pain in his throat. There was a roaring noise, indistinct, and his lungs suddenly inflated, as if he'd gasped. Just when it was getting a little _too_ deep a breath, the sensation stopped, and the weight of his chest forced the air back out.

He didn't have the strength to breathe again.

But that one breath had brought a little clarity to his stunned mind, and he cracked open his eyes to see that MacGyver was leaning over him, face tight with concern. His eyes were surprisingly blue, nearly the same color as the sky through the strip of tint on the top of the windshield, and Saito felt himself drifting off again when that jackhammering noise came back, and he gasped.

Only he didn't. His lungs simply inflated.

Saito got his eyes open a little wider, and MacGyver seemed to deflate with relief in unison with him. "I know it hurts. I can change the air volume, is it too much?"

The kid hadn't been doing rescue breathing, and whatever was making his throat hurt was still there.

The fucking tire inflator.

Saito felt his eyes get even wider, and MacGyver watched him closely. "It's attached to your watch, it'll go off every twenty seconds. If that's not enough, I can bump it to fifteen. Blink once for yes, twice for no. Is it too much?"

Saito waited, uncomfortably aware of the seconds ticking by, and his paralyzed body's complete inability to follow any of his commands. Stomping on a panic response took almost all his concentration.

Apparently twenty seconds were up, and the compressor kicked on, inflating his lungs. Again, it was close to too deep, but he kinda liked that, since it meant it took longer for his lungs to decompress. He blinked twice.

The analyst blew out his cheeks. "Okay. I'll check in with you every two minutes." Meaning every six breaths. Then the young man disappeared from his view, and Saito let his eyes drift close.

Once he became used to the rhythm, it was bearable. Bearable but not great. All he could think about was that it was impossible. The compressor was pushing out air at least at 80 psi, and his lungs were used to air being inhaled or exhaled at about 2 psi above ambient. He was an accomplished scuba diver, and he knew damn well that first inflation should have killed him.

Much like the pressure in a scuba tank would kill you if there wasn't a regulator between the gas in the tank and your lungs. That was what MacGyver had built. A jury-rigged regulator onto the tire compressor. It was a 12 volt compressor, attached to the cigarette lighter, so as long as the rover had power, it would keep working.

He might actually make it to Toolonga.

The nausea moved on to abdominal cramping, so bad that every seam in the road felt like he was being horsewhipped across the gut. He had no way to express the pain, he could barely open his eyes at all by then, but he could still hear, and MacGyver kept up a steady stream of information and encouragement in an effort to distract him.

It wasn't enough.

The next time he managed to open his eyes, it was only a slit. He found the entire world was sideways. The light was far too bright, but he didn't dare close them again, and his lungs inflated painfully. It took him far longer than it should have to figure out he was lying on his side, in recovery position, under the rover, with no memory of how he'd gotten there. In the light, a figure too blurred to make out was tearing through piles of dark, irregular shapes. Fabric?

Bags?

The figure came towards him, no clearer to his immovable eyes but his voice was still recognizable. "I'm sorry, Saito. Road's blocked. Just – hang on. Okay? Hang on."

He tried to blink no. The effort cost him the ability to open them again.

He had strange dreams. Day turned to night. There was a fire, too far away to make him warm, terribly bright, and a figure danced around and around it. It was ringed in containers, of all shapes and sizes, some burning, some steaming. The figure brought one to him, setting the hot thing in front of his face, tantalizingly close. He was so cold and thirsty, but the figure would give him nothing to drink. Instead, the golden man crouched by his side and penned a tattoo into his chest. It stung like crazy.

The taipan came back, beckoned by the fire. The figure didn't see it; it slithered down Saito's throat, curling up in his stomach to warm him. To warn him, about the night, but it was too late. Bits of the dark took shape, surrounded the golden figure. He stopped dancing. Then they all sat, and began to sing a song. The melody was quite strange, it reverberated uncomfortably in his chest. Trying to lure the snake out, he thought, but the taipan would not be moved.

Then the daylight came. Chased away the golden figure. Left only the shards of night around the fire. Time and time again, the shadows came for the snake, he felt it writhing in his body but they could not coax it out. The more it struggled, the more he felt pain.

It was hurting him. The shadows were hurting him.

They tried everything to get it out. They blew smoke into his nose and mouth, like he was a log. They drew symbols on his face. Eventually they tucked him into darkness, hoping to force the taipan out with cold, but he was on fire, he was far too warm for their paltry shade to make any difference.

Gradually he was able to make out other things. There was a black box near his head, and in time he realized the repeating clicking of the snake's scales was actually the jackhammering from before. Breathing for him. He dragged sluggish eyes towards it, noting a box of similar color and size right behind it.

It took him a very long time – and a nap – before he put together that it was the rover's battery. He counted seconds, but he always seemed to make it past twenty before he inhaled. Somehow it was always on the cusp of not quite being fast enough, and a stirring of panic rippled across his chest. With it came a weak burst of adrenaline.

This was bad. Everything was bad. He was in danger.

His body wouldn't move, just his eyes, and the snake, which seemed to be inside his hand. It nosed the sand in front of him using his own fingers, and the shadows saw it. They came closer, into the darkness they'd saved for him, and took it up. Tried to find a way to get the taipan out.

There was nothing he could do.

Daylight trickled once again into darkness, and they sang it a welcome.

But the golden figure did not return.

The next thing that Saito was actually certain of was an unsettling hiss. His immediate thought was the taipan, though he wasn't quite sure why, and he pried open grainy eyes to take in the early dawn light. It was bright, but this time it didn't sear straight into his brain, and he found he was completely unsurprised to find that he wasn't alone.

At least ten aborigines were gathered around him, mumbling to themselves in a deep, melodic language. All male, all dressed in faded, mis-matched clothes. Half of them wore no shirts at all, the other half no shoes.

Their expressions were surprised.

Saito blinked, wondering if he was still dreaming, and the hiss repeated, this time ending with a fierce spitting sound. Something warm and definitely _not_ imagined curled tighter against his stomach.

Shit. The goddamn snake was literally pressing itself up against him.

 _Warm thing in a cold desert_ , he thought clinically. The snake had found itself a great little spot to spend the night. As long as he didn't move, maybe he could save himself another bite.

The men around him continued their mumbling, but every time one of them took a step in his direction, there was a fierce hiss, and then a low growl.

. . . _growl_?

Those were the only sounds he could hear. The seconds ticked by, but the tire inflator didn't start. He took a surprised breath when he realized it, and somehow, he actually took the breath. He heard it whistle through his numbed throat.

Saito swallowed, or he tried to. Agony erupted out of the numbness, the worst strep throat he'd ever felt. He was unable to keep himself still, he reached clumsily for his aching teeth and jaw, found the hose. More than one. He started pulling instinctively, hearing the same hiss as before, and it seemed to go on forever. Once he broke the suction the hoses had created, they slipped along a little more easily, but it still felt like he was dragging strips of Velcro over his tonsils.

But he got them out, both of them. One longer than the other. It didn't matter. As soon as it was done he collapsed, gagging weakly, and found that he could cough.

He could breathe.

Mostly.

Whatever was up against his body stayed determinedly right where it was, and when he dared, Saito dropped his chin. It angled his head off some kind of cloth onto sand, but that didn't matter. A large brown tabby cat, looking way sturdier than your normal house cat, was sitting on the blanket that was draped over him. Its ears were laced back, yellow eyes glaring at the aborigines. And whatever was touching him, it was underneath the blanket, up against the skin of his stomach.

Saito tried to swallow, convulsively, and an ear flicked towards him. But the cat didn't show any aggression towards him at all. It continued growling, low in its chest, and never took its eyes off the figures surrounding him.

And he _was_ surrounded. He was lying alongside the Land Rover, no longer under it but just beside. A small fire had been built nearby but it was out now, and two half-full bottles of water sat just outside the embers. Beyond that were the men.

There was no sign of MacGyver.

Saito tried swallowing again, but it was incredibly difficult. His whole body was stiff and sore, numb and tingling all at the same time. He felt like he hadn't moved in a week. Maybe it had been. How in the hell was he still alive?

One of the men, shirtless but wearing what looked like store-bought khaki shorts, made a halfhearted gesture at one of the water bottles. Saito managed to drag his eyes up to the guy, and he tried to nod. It dug his ear further into the sand, but he didn't have the strength to pick up his head, he'd used it all up getting the tubes out.

The man gave a unhurried nod back, and bent to retrieve the bottle. The cat hissed in warning.

His mouth was far too dry to speak, even if his throat had been behaving, and Saito hoped like hell the guy would just approach. It was a cat, for Christ's sake. Feral, certainly, but it wasn't like it thought he was prey. It was a big cat, sure, but not a damn leopard.

And the man seemed to agree, because he kept speaking to it in his language as he approached. The cat spat at him, but then grudgingly gave a little ground, and the aborigine eventually squatted down at his head, and tipped the bottle to his lips.

Whatever was in it, it wasn't water, but it was wet, and Saito did his level best to drink it. He coughed and sputtered out as much as he got down, but the pain was far more manageable when the old man took it away. Saito nodded his thanks, and closed his eyes.

MacGyver must have enlisted the local's help. And since the rover was behind him, he either ran out of fuel or intentionally left the vehicle. Left him here to be tended while he hopefully found civilization, and a phone.

The guy was on his own.

_Dalton, baka gaijin, I did the best I could._

He drifted in and out the rest of the morning. The men didn't leave him, and continued to talk amongst themselves, but they never lost that odd sense of . . . almost respect. Seeing as he was Japanese, it was a little disconcerting. The ball of squirming warmth settled down against his stomach, apparently glad that he'd stilled, and when he felt like he could, he brought up his arm and tried to brush the blanket away. The cat hissed – at him, this time – and he stopped, but by then his fingers had fallen into a pile of squirming softness, and he realized exactly what had happened.

She'd tucked her kittens under the blanket with him.

It was very late in the morning when the men looked up from their unhurried chat, and several of them simply stood up and walked away. The cat watched them, tail flicking rapidly, but once they were out of earshot she seemed to settle. Then she turned and looked at him.

Saito looked back. He blinked, slowly.

She blinked back, equally slowly, and the rapid twitching of her tail settled. It was still near the ground, but it was an improvement.

Then she nuzzled the edge of the blanket aside and slipped under as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

The men who had remained smiled broadly. Saito just concentrated on staying still.

Another hour ticked by in a vaguely uncomfortable haze before Saito became aware of a growing need to relieve himself. Getting up – even sitting up – was not going to be possible, and pissing all over a litter of kittens didn't seem terribly polite. Saito licked his lips, barely wetting them, and tried to speak.

Nothing came out but a croak.

The men noticed, though they didn't stop their lazy conversation. Several wavy white beards jutted out towards him as they called suggestions for what he might have meant, and Saito managed a sigh. He hadn't learned the language, by the time he'd gotten a lead on the link to the Japanese drug trade, he hadn't known which territory of Australia it would lead to, and different groups of aborigines spoke different tongues.

Eventually one of the men leaned down, picking up a simple, small container that looked like it might have once been a gourd. He held it out, head cocked in a question, and Saito just stared at him, not quite sure he understood. The man brought the container down to his crotch, and made a motion that was much easier to decipher.

Saito managed a nod.

As it turned out, there was a litter of kittens curled up along the bare skin of his stomach because there was nothing between his skin and the blanket. He was completely naked, save a chalky white powder that covered him basically from head to toe. Probably some sort of sunscreen, and something to keep the bugs off. When the old man threw back the blanket the tabby spat in anger and shot off towards the rear tire of the rover, hissing furiously. The kittens simply drew back against him, but luckily high enough that the old man didn't have to handle them to free up space. Saito found the old gourd was actually the perfect shape to handle the issue, and the old man tucked the blanket back over him when he was finished.

All the while, the feral cat screamed at them, and the men gathered around the dead fire guffawed, their teeth startlingly white against their dark, wizened faces. The old man carried the gourd back to his colleagues, and they each took a turn sniffing the contents and shaking their heads before emptying the container behind a large rock.

Saito could well imagine why. He might still be breathing, but the neurotoxic paralysis that should have killed him wasn't the only poison at work in his body right now. The venom was breaking down muscle, and his body was trying to flush the damage and toxins away. His kidneys were definitely not in great shape.

The she-cat immediately took back the ground she'd conceded, continuing growling warnings at the men for a good five minutes before the growling turned more towards bad-tempered griping than anything else. Saito had almost fallen asleep again by the time she'd calmed enough to dart back under the blanket and carefully inspect her mewling litter for damage. Saito didn't move.

 _Very_ tender flesh was currently well within her reach.

He eventually drifted off and was woken by a soft touch on his face, and a lumpy, frowning woman stared down at him, holding a bowl of what turned out to be some kind of very thin gruel. Despite her expression, she was patient with him as he struggled to get it down, and he had to admit, after he'd eaten it – and she insisted that he drink every drop – he felt a little better. Under the blanket, the she-cat seemed to know that someone was around, because she'd occasionally growl, and everyone would smile.

Eventually the sun moved high enough in the sky that he was no longer in shade, and two of the men impassively grabbed the blanket and pulled him, cats and all, under the rover. They didn't make him move – though they did offer him the gourd again, and he accepted, knowing damn well he needed to help his kidneys any way he could – and he had another uncomfortable nap, and another bowl of the watery stew, as well as the other water bottle of whatever liquid it was.

Again, after he drank it, the overall ache in his body lessened noticeably. Probably why it tasted so bad.

Eventually some younger men came, to relieve their older relatives, Saito guessed, and these men were far more active than their elders. They played a game with dice, one that was loud and involved a lot of cheering and shoving, and Saito dreamt of the streets of Tokyo. An earthquake hit, the youths were hooting, and by the time Saito realized he was awake again, he'd been dragged by the blanket out from beneath the vehicle, closer to the fire, which had been lit.

Oddly, he didn't hear the she-cat hiss, and he managed to lift an arm to find the litter of sand-colored kittens in their pile, but no mother cat. Probably off looking for dinner.

The youths sang songs, ate their own dinner by the fire, teased one another as young men often did. He tried to watch them, figure out the rules of the game as something to take his mind off the pain, and when they jumped up with a cheer, Saito opened eyes he didn't remember closing, wondering if the pot of bills had finally been won by one of the players.

Instead, he found three men approaching their fire. One of them was blond.

MacGyver had a pole slung across his back, with a large clear container of water on one end, and a backpack that apparently weighed the same on the other. He was sweat-stained and out of breath, but didn't appear injured, and his face lit up in a relieved grin as he wearily set down his load and came over to him.

"You're awake," he greeted. "Tubes are out, I see." Hot, dry fingers found their way to his throat. "We, uh, hit a little snag on the way to Toolonga, but Binyan and his tribe saw our fire, and once I explained what we were doing, they agreed to help." He said it in a tone that was almost asking someone else to confirm his version of the events, and Saito watched the other men closely. One of the youths quickly translated, and the other men then nodded their agreement. There was no indication of aggression in their body language or movement.

Saito swallowed, but his throat was still too swollen to let him speak. MacGyver correctly interpreted this, and promptly began adding something powdered to an empty plastic water bottle.

"You probably can't swallow pills yet, and I know this doesn't taste great, but it's going to help a lot." Water was added to the bottle, and the same terrible taste that he'd noticed before was present when the analyst brought it to his lips.

"I made it to the nature reserve, but you were right. As soon as I tried to place a secure call, service was disconnected." This was said much more quietly, and as soon as Saito managed to choke down the dose of medicine, MacGyver eased himself down against the front tire with a sigh. "This whole area's on a party line system, I don't know if it even connected or not but they shouldn't know where the call actually originated from. We, ah, we borrowed some meds from the clinic, which apparently happens quite frequently. I think we're safe for now."

So someone knew that they tried to call for help, but they had no idea where from. And a clinic getting hit for drugs – particularly painkillers, which Saito was quite sure was in the solution he'd just swallowed – probably happened all the time. It wouldn't necessarily send up a red flag. Clearly they were many miles from the reserve.

MacGyver was probably right. As long as no one else ventured along the road to see the vehicle, they were probably safe for the night.

Not that he had any idea what night it was. How long it had been. And not like he could ask.

The painkillers knocked him out until morning.

Again, a low growl and a soft, sing-song voice woke him, and it took him a little while to figure out that he could actually understand the words this time.

"- get it, trust me. I'm not going to hurt your babies. I'm just gonna come over here, nice and easy . . ."

The growling instantly increased in its intensity, and Saito smirked a little as he heard shuffling in the sand come to a sudden halt.

There was a brief pause, then a quiet huff. "You're just gonna leave me hanging over here?"

Saito cracked an eye open, then painfully swallowed. " . . . tried . . ." His voice was little more than a hoarse whisper, but it was something.

A second huff, this one clearly amused, and the analyst's face came into view. ". . . I told you I'd get you through this." He said it with the same calming lilt he was using on the cat, and Saito again marveled that a voice that deep could come out of a man that slight. Angus MacGyver was plenty tall, but not built anything like his partner. Lithe was the word that came to mind. A lot like most of the guys on Saito's old Special Assault team.

Probably the _only_ thing about him that was like most of the guys on Saito's old Special Assault team.

Slight or not, he braved the feral she-cat, who in fairness to her was doing the bitching grumbly warning thing rather than a true pre-attack signal, and settled himself on his haunches near Saito's head. He then carefully shook up a half-full water bottle, and Saito felt more than saw the she-cat retreat across the blanket to his feet, still making ill-tempered sounds.

He wondered if she just liked lighter-skinned people better, or the young man's natural charisma extended to animals.

"How you feeling?" MacGyver asked, uncapping the bottle.

Saito managed to pull his left hand out from beneath the blanket, and held it open in reply. The analyst caught on quickly, and handed over the bottle, but it was still a minute before Saito felt steady enough to actually try sipping out of it.

"I'll give you the last of the antivenom before we head out," MacGyver told him, keeping his voice low and easy. "It's been long enough by now that we can check you into a clinic and it shouldn't raise any flags. I'd have brought a saline drip but honestly we didn't have the time," he added with no small trace of apology.

Saito just shook his head and worked on the bitter-tasting water. Apologies were a waste of breath. " . . . heading where?" he rasped instead.

The analyst's eyebrows shot up, then he gestured – slowly – at the firepit, where three aborigines were regarding them silently. Saito hadn't even noticed them. "I kinda used up most of the brake fluid, and some of the transmission fluid too. Binyan's got a friend in a nearby village who's going to help us resupply."

Saito blinked, then shoved himself clumsily up onto his right elbow, earning a yowl of disapproval from the she-cat, and reminding him that he had a fuzzy pile still curled up against his stomach. The analyst reached out to steady him, but he shook his head, and slowly levered himself into a sitting position. It was uncomfortable; the running board was digging into his sore back and his left calf felt like a swollen brick, but it was worth it to see the world right-side up for a change, and he chugged the rest of the medicine.

The she-cat was extremely unhappy at this change, and retreated behind the rear tire, hissing. MacGyver eyed her warily. "You, uh, have a way with the local wildlife," he observed carefully.

Saito wasn't worried about the cats. He was a little more worried about the mad scientist-like collection of random car parts scattered around the firepit, which had been largely invisible to him until he'd sat up. Some were connected to each other with hoses that had doubtlessly come from the Land Rover, others had random litter duct-taped to them. One such contraption was balanced on a rock near the fire, with what looked a little like a water wheel spinning rapidly as the rising heat from the coals caused it to move.

Two cables ran from underneath it, and Saito saw they connected via more tape to less than half of the pair of jumper cables, clamped to the rover's battery terminals.

The same battery that had been used to power the tire inflator that had kept him alive until the paralysis that should have killed him eventually wore off.

Saito looked over the site again, then slowly rotated his head to look at the rover he was leaning against. The hood was open, and he didn't even want to think about what might be missing.

There was no way in hell MacGyver was taking that Land Rover anywhere. He'd completely cannibalized it.

The analyst followed his thinking, if not his gaze. "Don't worry, once I get the battery recharged I can get it back into working condition. Then one of Binyan's friends will get you to a clinic, and with any luck to a cellphone you can use to call in backup."

That was a terrible plan. Saito considered how to say that in the shortest number of English words. ". . . then what?"

MacGyver pressed his lips together, and glanced out towards the horizon, where the rising sun had cast everything in reds and deep pinks. "I'll commandeer a local vehicle, find the camp, and complete the mission."

Saito couldn't help but smirk. MacGyver definitely had guts stuffed somewhere in that thin frame, but guts were not enough. ". . . no you won't."

Oddly, the young analyst took no offense, and gave him a lopsided grin. "You're definitely feeling better."

He really wasn't. He knew the pain in his back was not just from lying on hard ground for days, just like he knew the only reason he was able to sit up was because he was being stuffed full of meds and painkillers. They had his primary and backup weapons, a dismantled Land Rover, and a small tribe of aborigines. The enemy had at least a dozen still-living, ex-military mercs and enough weaponry to take out a tank. They were also _highly_ incentivized to keep their fledgling drug operation alive and more importantly, under the radar. And they'd had Dalton all this time. The window to get him out alive would close before DXS could get them backup, even if it was just the local SWAT.

They were right where they'd been when he'd checked out. Screwed.

Saito used the empty bottle to indicate the mess around the fire pit. " . . . why?" Creating some kind of heat-powered generator to charge the rover's battery, that made sense. It was pretty damn clever, actually. But the fire was made up of wood and bramble and other naturally flammable materials, so why blow through the brake and transmission fluid? Why the high school science lab?

Oddly, the analyst hesitated, and when he finally spoke, his tone was very off-handed and casual. "I had to make an antivenom stand-in that first night, I knew I didn't have time to get to the park and back before . . . before it would be too late. I needed the glycol and mineral oil from the brake fluid and the antioxidants and lipids from the transmission fluid. When you combine those with certain organic enzymes - like the type found in RNA - you can bypass some of the steps needed to break down the toxins in taipan venom."

Saito just stared at him. The analyst didn't seem to notice.

"Unfortunately, in order to save your life, a _Rattus villosissimus_ had to die. Long-haired rats are the taipan's main prey, and evolved to have an excess of the enzymes we needed. Actually, the carcass is probably what attracted your nurse there," the analyst added, nodding to indicate the she-cat, who let out a low growl, like she knew they were talking about her.

Saito completely ignored the cat. " . . . how –"

How in the hell did this guy know how to make antivenom out of brake fluid?

MacGyver gave him a shrug. "One of my friends at MIT specialized in DNA and RNA. I must have read her thesis six times, so between that and the crash course on venomous reptiles the Army gave us when I was stationed in Afghanistan –" He broke off. "It wasn't ideal, but it saved your life. All we need is the fluid, and then I'll get the rover back up and running."

Saito let his head fall back against the vehicle in question. ". . . do you do this . . . for Dalton?"

"Cook up antivenom?" His eyebrows twitched upwards as he thought. "No. I made him a poultice once when he took a poisoned dart in Helsinki –" Then the young man trailed off. "Jack and I met back in Afghanistan. He was my overwatch. I'm not leaving without him."

He understood the sentiment, but there was no way a guy smart enough to do all this was dumb enough to think he could actually pull it off.

"You get any intel?" Saito managed, fairly passably, and MacGyver pushed himself to his feet and dusted off his hands before he accepted the empty water bottle and headed back towards the fire.

"Yeah, actually, I did." He watched MacGyver exchange the empty plastic for a small bowl that was sitting near the fire. "The local tribes – the ones that haven't been pressed into service – are all aware. They're afraid to involve the authorities, since they think that will lead the Yakuza right back to their villages. And they're probably not wrong." MacGyver brought the bowl over, and Saito recognized the watery gruel before it was handed to him. The bowl was almost too hot to hold, and the liquid felt awesome on his sore throat.

"Binyan thinks they're active right now between Ex Yuin and Ex Barnong, about eighty klicks east of Geraldton." Which was a good hundred miles south of their current position. There were very few roads, and no direct route. In this terrain, that drive would take five to six hours. The nearest hospital – assuming they were still southeast of Toolonga – was seventy miles in a different direction.

Once MacGyver took off, there'd be a sweet spot of around an hour and a half where he could possibly catch up. After that, he'd be too late.

"What's the plan?"

MacGyver helped himself to his own breakfast, which looked to be a less watered down version of the same gruel. "Well, I can't exactly blend in with the locals – and they probably got a pretty good look at me anyway. As soon as I figure out where they've stashed Jack, I'll . . ." He shrugged, and stuffed the spoon in his mouth. "Think of something," he finished around the mouthful of meat and vegetables.

Saito gave him a long look. "Not a plan."

The analyst flashed him one of those disarming grins of his. "It works out better than you'd think."

Saito picked the shadow out of the growing sunrise quickly, but it took the young aborigine another several minutes of a loping jog to actually reach the fire. MacGyver met him a little ways out, and the two had a short conversation before the runner clapped MacGyver on the back, then headed back the way he'd come at the relaxed run of a person who did the equivalent of a marathon every day. MacGyver wolfed down whatever had been left on his plate, then crouched beside the battery.

"Aaaand it looks like we're charged enough to crank," he declared. "Now for the fun part."

The fun part didn't really look all that fun, and the sun had fully risen by the time Saito determined that antibiotics were definitely a component of the medicine he was being given. Standing was about as awesome as he'd figured it would be, his legs wobbled like an old man's and he very nearly stepped on the suddenly squalling kittens, but he managed to pull himself upright using the back passenger windowsill, and he sucked down a few deep breaths, willing himself not to cough.

The she-cat was _not_ amused, and an alarmed-looking blond head poked out from around the hood. "Whoa, hey-"

Saito waved him off. "Clothes." But then he answered his own question, finding them folded neatly just inside the window. MacGyver had already come around the rover to steady him, but his hands were slicked with oil and filth and Saito again shook his head.

"Nothing you can help me with," he managed, and dawning comprehension crossed the other man's face. Instead of touching him, MacGyver gestured at the front passenger seat, where a small pack of wet-wipes sat atop one of their duffels.

That ended up being a good call. The other men by the fire had also figured it out, and left him to it. Getting back into his boxers was nearly impossible, and Saito gave up completely on the shirt. It was the first time he got a good look at the bite, and his calf looked as if someone had sliced it open and sewn a softball into the muscle. The skin was a glossy brownish-purple from the tops of his toes almost to his knee.

It felt a lot worse than it looked.

He managed to wobble himself back to the fire side of the rover and slid down the passenger door, leaning against it heavily before plopping back down on the upper corner of the blanket. Someone – maybe MacGyver – had cleared away the large rocks, so it wasn't really all that uncomfortable. It was almost like sitting in a hot box in an onsen.

The kittens he'd so suddenly abandoned had been hastily migrated behind a tire, and the she-cat was too busy corralling her litter to hiss at him. However, the three men by the fire seemed utterly transfixed by her, leaning together and talking among themselves, and MacGyver eventually extricated himself from under the hood and crossed back to the fire to pick up something that looked to Saito like part of the carburetor.

He caught Saito's gaze, then glanced curiously back at the aborigines before ducking his head and locating the cat. "Apparently that doesn't happen all that often," MacGyver told him, wiping sand off the part as he approached. "The elders, they, uh, they think you're a shaman."

Shaman was better than a lot of other options readily available. "Didn't think I was . . . one of them?"

After all, the cartel guys were largely Japanese and hakujin. He and MacGyver should have looked like two more thugs to Binyan and his tribe. How the guy'd managed not only to get their help, but also their trust . . .

He was beginning to see what Dalton had been going on about.

"No." MacGyver's tone held just a tiny bit of wonder, and his gaze was back on them. "They never even asked. I don't know how long they were watching before they decided to help us, but . . ." Then he smiled, a little self-deprecatingly. "But the fact that you were attached to a tire inflator being powered by a car battery was probably their first clue."

That was a fair point.

"And my third rate antivenom aside . . ." He hesitated, then shook his head. "I don't know how to thank them."

Saito widened his eyes a little. "Wait . . . there's something you don't know?"

The lopsided smirk came back, full force. "There's a whole universe of it out there, Akatsutsumi-san."

Right. Admit to lack of knowledge while showing off language skills. The older agent snorted. "Shittakaburi."

_Smartass._

The other side of the analyst's lips quirked up. "You know, Jack calls me the same thing. In Texan, which he thinks is its own language."

That was almost certainly true. "He's not much better."

The blond made a noise of agreement, then busied himself back under the hood.

About twenty minutes after Saito had settled back down, an angry tail appeared from behind the rear tire of the rover, and lashed annoyed swipes through the sand. The old men were fascinated, but Saito basically ignored her, and after the better part of two or three minutes, the sulking she-cat migrated her litter of kittens, one by one, back to Saito's left hip. Each one was carried dutifully the short distance, held up as she looked at him appraisingly, and then deposited deliberately against his thigh. They barely had their eyes open but they were still quite capable of crawling, and Saito eventually dropped his left hand from his lap to the blanket. There were four kittens in all, and they immediately started exploring.

He'd never had cats, growing up, and now he knew why. The damn things were tiny, but _jesus_ were they sharp. The she-cat watched him like a hawk, curled up like a fluffy loaf of bread by the tire, but she only hissed when he closed his hand around one of the mewling things, so he settled for generally keeping them from getting away, and making sure at least one of them was trying to maul him at all times.

The painkillers were having the same sedative effect they'd had before, and he knew if he let himself fall asleep, MacGyver would use the opportunity to bolt. He might not be worth shit in a physical fight at the moment, but there was nothing stopping him from sitting on his ass on a ridge providing overwatch. Even knowing the kid was EOD trained, and very clearly good at building random gizmos on the fly, there was no guarantee that Dalton was in any condition to move under his own power at this point – assuming he was still alive – and MacGyver couldn't carry Dalton and cover his own ass at the same time.

But Saito was quite sure MacGyver was going to try.

And it seemed that the analyst was also thinking along the same lines, because every once in a while, the tinkering seemed to slow, and a head would poke around the hood, or MacGyver would fetch something minor from the fire, always giving him a casual once-over as he did it.

He did seem genuinely curious about the kittens, though, even coming so far as to crouch near Saito's feet, scrubbing at his hands with a wet wipe. "Hard to believe something that cute is such a massive ecological disaster," he murmured. The she-cat flicked her tail in warning.

Saito teased one of the kittens so that it was facing MacGyver, and it sort of bellycrawled a few inches in his direction with a little squeak. The young man smiled.

Saito didn't. "I know you were hoping I'd pass out. Guess you're SOL."

The smile didn't go anywhere, it just settled into something more wry. "It would have saved us an awkward conversation," the analyst responded drily. "But unless you're up for a three mile run, pretty sure you're staying right here."

So Mac was going to have to travel to his alternate transportation. Saito tucked that tidbit away for his time and distance calculations.

Mac made a gesture towards Saito's calf – and the she-cat hissed a warning. "The bite's infected. I've been giving you a broad spectrum antibiotic – which you noticed earlier," he added apologetically. "But there's definitely an abscess, and it'll probably need to be lanced and irrigated. Once Binyan's friends are back here with the fluids, they'll top off the rover and get you on your way."

Saito gave the other man as level a stare as he could. "I want Dalton back as much as you do, but if you do this, they _will_ catch you."

The smile broadened. "I have a contingency for that." One of his still-dirty hands dug around in his khakis and came up with that same circuit-board green tracker he'd tried to plant on the guys taking Dalton, however many days ago it had been. "The range on this is limited, but in the flatlands it'll be at least fifty miles. It's keyed to the DSX distress band."

The older agent shook his head in disgust. "Listen to me, MacGyver –"

"Mac," he corrected.

"Orokana hossori shita shōnen," he growled, momentarily forgetting MacGyver – Mac – probably didn't know that much Japanese. Not that it mattered. The stupid, skinny young man got the gist of it. "You surveille _only_ , stay out of sight, locate Jack, and then you _wait for backup_. If they catch you, it's over. Dalton's had training resisting interrogation. You have not. This isn't Hollywood."

The smile hardened a little. "Actually, I've had SERE training as well as interrogation training through DXS, like every other agent –"

Saito scoffed. "You're not an agent. Agents follow orders, and they do what they have to do to get the job done. Sound like you?" He knew his primary and secondary weapons were still inside the rover – they'd been placed carefully under his folded clothes. MacGyver didn't intend to take them with him.

MacGyver didn't even attempt to hold the smile this time. "I don't kill unless I have to," he said, his voice low and quiet. "I won't get caught. And if I do, I'll bluff. When backup doesn't show, they'll throw me in with Jack. Once their guard is down, DXS can move in, and I'll get Jack out."

"You are a goddamn covert operative," Saito countered, keeping his hoarse voice low as well. "You might not think you know much, but trust me, the damage they can do with what's in your head-"

"They're not going to have time," MacGyver interrupted. "You'll be in a hospital in six hours, find a phone, and give DXS everything they need to shut these guys down."

"And what if that's tomorrow night?" he snapped. "They're done playing by now, bakayarou. You want Dalton to have to watch while they slit your belly open and let your intestines dry in the sun? That's _Yakuza_ you're dealing with. Dalton can hold on because they have nothing over him, and they'll keep him alive as long as it takes. You go in there, you hand them everything they need to break him."

Finally, _finally_ a little doubt flickered across his face, and MacGyver's eyes cut to the she-cat as he considered his options. "Then make sure backup gets here before tomorrow night," he finally said. "Because if they're done playing, Jack can't wait."

And damned if the kid didn't straighten and head back to the fire. Saito knew there was no purpose in shouting at him – nothing was going to change his mind – so he watched silently while Dalton's partner gathered his things. The tracker ended up inserted into the stitching of a messenger bag, near the reinforced section where the leather strap was sewn onto the bag. Some water, a few energy bars, and the swiss army knife were squirreled away, and then MacGyver slung the bag over his shoulder, casting a glance back as he did so. He even managed a small, sincere-looking smile.

"Counting on you, Saito-san."

In answer, he gave a derisive snort. "This is going in my report."

Not that his report was going to mean anything. Hard to discipline someone who's already dead. MacGyver wasn't wearing a ring, and he was too young to have much more than just started a family. He probably thought he had nothing to lose.

Oh, to be young and stupid again.

MacGyver broke into the same kind of effortless jog of all twenty-somethings who run for recreation, and in mere moments he was out of earshot. Saito glanced down at his wrist for his watch, only to find a pale band where it once was.

Right. It had been used as the timing device for the makeshift ventilator. Apparently when MacGyver said he was going to put everything back together, the watch hadn't made the list. Saito made do with the sun. He calculated it was about an hour before a pair of young men approached, at a walk rather than a jog, carrying two pairs of bags between them.

The transmission and brake fluid, among other things.

They spoke their sing-song language to one another and seemed to know exactly what they were doing. Had they not been screwing around like young men who had nowhere to be, it would have taken them only a few minutes to top off the fluids and put the rover back together.

Unlike their elders, they were not terribly impressed with his four-legged spirit animal nurse, and Saito pulled himself stiffly to his feet, once again abandoning the mewling litter. He did, however, stroke each one beforehand as a way of saying thank you, and a chorus of high-pitched squeaks told him they were going to be just fine without him.

This time he did struggle into his shirt, with a little help from his young friends. His arms were just –

Heavy. His body was too damn heavy. And also still coated in that white powder. He awkwardly swiped it off in little puffs of what looked like smoke.

There was no way he could cram his swollen calf into his tac pants, and in the end he simply slit the fabric along the inside seam almost all the way up to the knee. It still hurt like hell when he finally managed to jam his calf through. One of the old men produced a few rusty safety pins from his pocket, and they kept his pant leg from just flapping around. Though fat lot of good the fabric had done to protect him from the first snakebite.

His boots turned out to be less of a problem. There was just enough extra bootlace to make it work, and his flappy pant leg did a decent job of hiding that the ankle guard wasn't laced at all.

The two young men – who he gathered were called Tak and Jim-ba – were clearly enjoying the fact they had been assigned such an interesting and important task, and seemed to be in constant competition with one another. Saito barely got a hand on his weapons before they did, and while Tak disappointedly watched him secure the firearms, Jim-ba fetched the exhausted first aid kit. Saito located and self-administered the last of the antivenom - already neatly pre-measured in a syringe, like MacGyver had fucking packed his lunch for him - and he also found and helped himself to a generous portion of ibuprofen.

There in the bottom of the bag were two old Epi pens, and Saito tucked those in the upper right thigh pocket of his tac pants. Epinephrine – otherwise known as adrenaline – could come in handy.

It seemed that the she-cat was aware that the vehicle that had been her family's home for the last few days was no longer safe. She'd taken her litter not to the back tire, but to a rock about twenty yards away, and was sitting halfway between it and the car. She flicked her tail, but then gave him a slow blink, and he returned the gesture. Then he tried to take a step away from the safety of the rover, and very nearly face-planted.

His young helpers swooped in and guided him around the vehicle, and he sank gratefully into the passenger seat. There was a brief scuffle for driving privileges, and Tak gave him a blindingly white smile as he practically jumped behind the wheel and started her up. Saito wasn't the least bit surprised when the young aborigine – who wasn't even wearing his shirt, and hadn't spoken a word of English - whipped the rover around like a stock car driver and started hauling ass in an easterly direction.

Dalton's idiot partner had gotten at least one thing right - Saito had to find a phone, and he had to get backup to them. Going quiet wouldn't have been enough to engage the cavalry. Much as he might hate the idea of leaving MacGyver on his own, he had to get a signal out, and he had to do it fast.

What he'd said to MacGyver was true. In ideal circumstances, the quickest DXS could get boots here on the ground was sixteen hours, and nothing about this op had been ideal up to this point. And the cartel was definitely in bed with Yakuza. Once they reported it up the chain that feds were on to them, if they hadn't gotten anything out of Dalton within the first twenty-four hours, a proxy would be sent in to assess. If the proxy felt the situation needed to be escalated, they'd either take Dalton back to Japan – risky, considering they didn't know what the feds had – or they'd send in an interrogation team.

There was no way to know when that team might arrive, so ambushing them was out of the question – but it also meant the camp was getting used to random Japanese men driving up in expensive rentals. Saito was pretty sure the only two guys who got a good look at him were both dead, so –

So there was a chance they hadn't seen his face, and he could bluff his way in. Once in, he could assess and potentially try to get Dalton out, and MacGyver too if the moron had gotten himself caught. They didn't have to get away clean, they just needed to stay clear long enough for DSX to swoop in and mop up.

Outside of the fact he looked like death warmed over and couldn't walk, it seemed like a fairly reasonable plan.

Which left the small problem of how the hell to get that signal to DSX and get a damn tac team that the cartel wouldn't see coming. There was no guarantee that calling out to Sydney would get men here before the drug runners were tipped off. New Zealand – and Japan – were both way closer than the US, and less likely to be compromised. Hell, if he could just get a message to his old team he was pretty sure they could make something happen -

Actually, a party line call to Japan should go through without a hitch, since the cartel owned the damn utilities. He should have thought of that days ago.

Saito turned and gave the driver a look. "Do you speak English?"

The young man nodded, and from the back seat came a long string of words apparently contradicting that.

"I need a phone. The nearest phone," he stressed, when the boy started nodding before he'd even finished.

"Hospital," Tak confirmed, and Saito shook his head.

"Phone."

But he received a firm headshake. "Hospital," Tak repeated self-importantly. "The Mac said."

"Oh, did he?" Saito inquired politely. "Is that what the Mac said."

Tak nodded, clearly not fluent enough to catch onto the sarcasm. Saito glanced out the windshield, as if the conversation was over, and when they topped the next hill an actual paved road appeared as if by magic. There were no street signs – apparently MacGyver had had the sense to take them off-road a bit before he'd parked – but Tak quite confidently selected a direction, and Jim-ba made a snarky comment as they got underway.

No sign of any other cars, but after about five minutes of driving, they came to an intersection with power and phone lines. Again, Tak confidently picked a direction, and this time the back-seat driver didn't have any criticism to offer.

Saito let him drive. It was likely the hospital was also in the direction of the most densely packed civilization, and he would politely ask them to stop at the first house they came to.

After all, he knew exactly how to stop the car, thanks to MacGyver. Those wires were probably still exposed inside the glovebox.

They must have gone twenty miles before another car appeared on the horizon, and Saito clocked it – an old jeep - and paid no more attention to it. Until the SOB riding the guy's ass decided to pass him like he was standing still. The local he couldn't have cared less about, but the tailgater was in a silver Mercedes, and that had potential.

"Tak, pull over," he instructed, shifting in his seat as the car approached them at a hundred and twenty kph easy. The young man looked over, his eyes widening comically when he saw that Saito had unholstered his sidearm.

" . . . hospital?" he asked in confusion.

" _Stop_ ," Saito growled, and yanked the wheel hard right.

Whether he recognized the word or not, Tak wasn't willing to wreck the rover, and Saito angled them across the line as the vehicle skidded to a noisy halt. Then he calmly exited the passenger door – standing directly in the path of the oncoming Mercedes – and let the pistol hang by his side in plain sight.

The driver could have gotten around them. It would have been dangerous at that speed in the sand, but a skilled driver could have pulled it off. This was not a skilled driver. The Mercedes did come to a stop, if not as gracefully as the Land Rover, and the driver, a wide-eyed Caucasian male in his mid-forties, stared at him with a mixture of surprise and anger. Beside him, an equally Caucasian woman seemed to be screaming at him, but Saito could barely hear her.

He limped carefully around to the driver side window, unwilling to admit his gun weighed about five times what it should, and tapped the barrel smartly on the glass. The man gulped and nodded, then shook off the emphatic hand on his arm and scrambled to find the window control.

Definitely a tourist, definitely a rental. Definitely more money than sense.

The woman continued screaming, and now Saito was close enough to hear her, even with the excellent sound isolation of the luxury rental. Saito's Italian was rusty, but he definitely got the gist. Run him over and drive away.

He re-evaluated her; she was definitely the brains of the couple.

The driver eventually found the control, and cracked the window, just barely. "W-what do you want? We don't have any money." His English was good, hardly accented.

Saito gave the couple a polite smile. "Your phone. It's an emergency."

"It is now," the woman growled, and the Italian was much more pronounced. "We have already called the police!"

Which was a bold faced lie. "Great," Saito told them, then gestured with the pistol. "Exactly what I was going to do. Phone, please. Now."

The driver sighed, his dark eyes flickering between Saito's face and the gun, before he reached into the cupholder and grabbed exactly what Saito had hoped to see. A cellphone out here was useless, there was no coverage. Any tourist braving the western provinces would know that, and they'd have brought something a little better.

The man rolled down the window a little further, attempting to hand the phone out, but he hadn't quite gotten it down far enough, and he fumbled with the door controls as his wife continued to berate him under her breath. Eventually the satellite phone was thrust out, and Saito accepted it with a nod.

"Thank you. Sorry for the inconvenience. You two should be on your way."

"With the police!" the woman yelled through the half-open window, despite her husband trying desperately to shush her. "That phone has GPS, they will find you instantly!"

Excellent. "When you do finally reach them, make sure you tell them I'm Japanese." Dirty cops might let it go, but if they happened to reach cops the cartel hadn't bought, all the better. He limped back to the car, where Tak and Jim-ba were both staring wide-eyed at him, and all but fell back into the rover.

"Drive," he instructed, gesturing in the direction they were generally heading, and Tak did his best bobble head impression and floored it, leaving the silver Mercedes in the dust, and the local in the jeep just behind them, trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Saito ignored them, put his gun away, and examined his prize. It was almost a toy, consumer quality and carried by yuppy tourists everywhere, but it would get the job done. And it made his next decision a lot easier.

A head poked up from the backseat as he started dialing, and Saito gave Jim-ba a look via the rear view mirror as he lifted the phone to his ear. After some time, it did actually connect.

"Kato525," he said into the silence, and then heard the telltale click of the line going secure. Fucking Jack Dalton and his stupid callsigns. He assigned them all, and of course his own was a Texas reference.

Saito had no idea what MacGyver's might be. Probably something less culturally insensitive.

Or, knowing Dalton, perhaps _more_ so.

"Agent report."

"Patch me through to the director." The time to go up through the chain was long past. Saito glanced in the rear view mirror, confirming that their Italian friends were not following. He'd give them another couple miles before he had Tak take them off-road.

"The director is unavailable."

Right. It was close to noon, which meant nine pm in LA. "Then make her available," he snapped. "Our targets took Dalton and they're about to get MacGyver. I'm compromised. Local assistance is a no-go."

". . . understood."

He didn't have high hopes of that. However, he also didn't have to wait long before there was another series of clicks, and then a cool feminine voice in his ear.

"Saito. Report."

He repeated what he'd told the analyst, with slightly more detail – it was important that she know how long they'd had Dalton, and the implications – and the location information that MacGyver had given him.

"You said he had a tracker?" Her voice was slightly breathless, as if she was walking.

"Yes, DSX distress band. Not sure when he's going to activate it, but whatever it is, it's running on batteries. Won't be good for more than a few hours, range is fifty miles."

"And where are you?"

"A paved road in the middle of the outback. If you need better, track me."

There was a quiet murmur, as if she'd just passed through a cocktail party, and then the sound of a car door slamming. "Ops is pinpointing your location. I'll be there in twenty."

So the director was still in LA, then.

"What's your status?"

He debated. The truth would get him sidelined – which in all honesty was probably the right call. Except that it would take her the rest of the damn day to get him tac, and longer still to get them in position. "Mobility's impaired, but I'm still good for surveillance."

"That's not what I asked." Her tone had sharpened a little, and he sighed silently.

"Snake bite. Left calf. I've already been treated." All of which was completely true.

The crappy sat phone did little to disguise her skepticism. "I wasn't aware there were any non-venomous snakes in Australia." He didn't see any reason to respond to that – it was a statement, not a question – and she let it hang in the air between them a long moment. "Can you get to a hospital?"

"Heading to one now." Which was also true. "If Dalton's given up our covers, I won't be able to stay long."

"We'll work on that on this end. I'll have exfil for you within two hours."

"Negative." It was out of his mouth before he even thought. "I am the only other DXS resource you have on the ground, and you brought me in for a reason – to infiltrate the Japanese arm of this operation. I'll circle back and try to make contact with MacGyver. Barring that, I'll keep tac informed on enemy movements."

"You will obey my order. MacGyver is a capable and resourceful agent who can take care of himself." She paused. "Despite appearances."

He didn't miss the title. Agent. Not analyst. And he was begrudgingly starting to accept it. "Maybe so, but unless he can build a helicopter out of heroin, I don't see him extracting Dalton," Saito disagreed. "At least let me reach out to my contacts in Tokyo, find out who the Yakuza may have sent."

"You can do that from the plane." Her tone brooked no argument.

"Yes ma'am." Yes, that was completely true. He could do that from a plane.

She correctly interpreted his response. "I understand that Dalton brought you in, and you have a certain loyalty towards him. Going in there compromised just puts another asset at risk."

It was hard to argue with her logic – it was the same as his own to MacGyver. He hadn't argued it so much as just flatly ignored it, though, and Saito didn't have that option.

"I have an old alias, someone who would blend in. Director, these people can move their operations on a moment's notice. If MacGyver's tracker fails or we don't locate it in time, they're in the wind. Leaving me in play is our best shot at completing this mission and getting your agent back." He was careful not to say 'agents'.

MacGyver probably hadn't made it all the way out to the site yet. He needed to give the kid a good hour after he arrived to do something stupid.

"You're assuming Jack's still alive."

"Yes ma'am." He would believe it until he saw the body with his own eyes.

There was a long pause, and Saito reluctantly allowed Tak to continue heading towards the nearest hospital – and further from MacGyver and his partner. He very nearly spoke again, to try to make his case, but she beat him to it.

"Head to the hospital. I'll let exfil make the call – but I'll send them with a care package if they clear you for duty."

Smart woman. Making sure he'd hang around for exfil by dangling a carrot.

"Yes ma'am." Saito ended the call, then stared blankly at the dash while he tried to remember the number. It was a little harder than it should have been, and Saito took a deep, cleansing breath and tried to shove his nii-sama's voice out of his head.

_Do not believe everything you think._

He was under the influence of narcotics and his body was full of poison. If he went back into the field and allowed himself to be captured, he would be giving their enemy a means to break them both, just as MacGyver would if he was caught.

He was likely weaker than he thought he was. And slower.

Fortunately a hospital could fix both those problems, at least temporarily.

Saito dialed the next string of numbers on his list. That checkin was much easier, if not completely secure – or without expletives. However, when the man on the other end told him he understood the situation, Saito believed him implicitly.

The 'closest hospital' was another hour's drive, and Saito legitimately had concerns about the rover overheating – or self-destructing – before they pulled up to something that could be called a clinic. If one was being generous. He took his primary and backup weapons and threw them in the empty glovebox, then motioned Tak and Jim-ba out of the vehicle, and confiscated the keys. He managed to limp under his own power into the one-story, sand-colored building, and the young woman behind the counter looked every bit as weary as he felt.

The moment her eyes fell on Tak and Jim-ba, any budding smile died on her lips. "Can I help you?"

The two young men were either extremely used to this behavior – that Saito could only label overt racism – or utterly oblivious, and they both started to noisily explain the problem. She basically ignored them, keeping her brown eyes on him, and Saito felt a rush of irritation.

Yes, they were young men. Yes, they were loud, they were rough, they were dressed for a trip to the beach instead of an office.

And they had saved his life. And probably saved MacGyver's.

So Saito gave her a polite smile and said nothing at all.

After about thirty seconds she seemed to realize that simply looking at him wasn't going to get her what she wanted – and that was apparently about the time that either Tak or Jim-Ba managed to convey _what_ exactly had bitten him, because her demeanor shifted. In the blink of an eye she was out of the chair and shouting for a nurse, and Saito started for the only door that led from the lobby towards the rest of the facility. By the time he had limped to the door, it was being yanked open, and a very large, khaki-covered man who reminded him quite a bit of Steve Irwin nearly ran right into him.

"Oi, mate, when were you bit? Let's get you over here, get that leg up, and get some fluids into ya!"

He came out all the way to offer help, and Saito glanced over his shoulder at Tak and Jim-ba, who were both suddenly loitering in the lobby like they weren't quite sure what to do.

Saito jerked his head. They didn't have to be asked twice.

Steve Irwin didn't seem to have the same problem with them that his receptionist did. And much like everything else on this godforsaken mission, the facility was much more than it initially appeared. The equipment was aged but immaculately cared for, and he was in a reclining bed with his left calf on a pillow and a catheter in his arm in less than two minutes.

"Alright, mate, let's get ya settled and let me get a look at this thing, eh?"

It didn't look any better than it had that morning. In fact it looked significantly worse. The car ride certainly hadn't done him any favors.

Irwin squinted at him. "Didja get a look at what bit'chya?"

Saito mentally walked through the conversation a couple times before he responded. "Not really. Someone said it was an inland taipan, but . . . I'd be dead, right?"

The doctor nodded. "Yeah you would be. They have enough venom to take down more'n a hundred blokes with one bite. When did this happen?"

Saito shrugged. "Couple days ago? I kinda slept through some of it."

He got a surprised laugh. "That sounds about right, mate. Any difficulty breathing? Chills, fevers, anything like that?"

Saito let him run down all the symptoms, admitting to his current pain and weakness, which was vanishing as whatever was in the IV fluids did its job. The doctor came to the same conclusion MacGyver had – that it would have to be drained – and then went about engaging Tak and Jim-ba in spirited conversation about the weather and sports while he subtly gathered the equipment he'd need.

The sat phone beeped, and Saito checked the text. He should have asked that Italian couple for the charger. Nothing to be done about it now, and despite the GPS being on the battery was still at seventy-eight percent.

The text confirmed that his old cover had been revived. A second text rolled in, longer than the first, and Saito raised an eyebrow.

Not just revived, but revised. Awesome.

His old captain was having a good time with this.

"Alright, mate, we're just gonna numb you up a little, then deflate this watermelon of a leg you got, drain some of the fluid off. Should make you feel a good bit better soon."

Despite the lidocaine, Saito could still feel the scalpel plenty, and Tak and Jim-ba watched in stunned, silent fascination as pus suddenly shot out of the softball and a half-sized lump in his calf. He flexed the screaming muscles when the stream slowed to a trickle, and just when he thought the crap coming out of his body couldn't smell any worse, the more pudding-like pus started getting squeezed out.

His calf really was soup.

"Whoo-ee," Steve Irwin commented, massaging the rest of it out of the neat, one inch long incision in his still-puffy skin. "That's gonna be leakin' on you a few more days, mate. I'll be sure to give you a waiver for the airport, and we'll get you set up with a bit o' stuff to make that smell a little better for the poor sods sittin' beside you."

"Oh, I'm not due to fly out for a week," Saito told him, affecting surprise. "Just as well, I guess."

Irwin squinted at him again, then turned and looked back at Jim-ba and Tak. "Your mates told me you're flyin' out this afternoon."

So they knew more English than they were letting on. Saito maintained his innocent look. "No, not unless . . . you're saying I need to be airlifted somewhere?"

The Australian doctor blew out his cheeks. "You're certainly not going walkabout on that leg. If you're gonna be stayin' a fair bit, let's get you to Alice Springs. This bite's already infected, and you could definitely do with a stay in a right proper hospital."

"Whatever you say, doc."

An additional thirty minutes got him some 'temporary' stitches – "Just in case they decide to open you up again and do another irrigation," which were exactly like regular stitches and made Saito question whether or not all stitches were temporary – and a significant quantity of liquid pharmaceuticals. The calf was wrapped and the rusty safety pins replaced with shiny new ones that were unlikely to give him tetanus. Now that it had been lanced, the leg mostly actually fit into the pant leg, and getting the boot on was a little easier.

"I've called ahead to Alice Springs, they'll be waiting for ya. It'll be a bit of a jaunt, though, so I've topped you off with something to help you through. These blokes here have already agreed to take you. Seems like they found you in the nick of time."

"They sure did," Saito agreed readily, and Tak elbowed Jim-ba, who beamed.

"Don't be surprised if they ask you to spend the night," Steve Irwin continued, a little more soberly. "You should feel pretty all right here and now, but come tonight, you'll be glad you're there."

"I appreciate it, doc," Saito assured him. "We'll head straight there."

"Good on ya, mate." He beamed the happy, carefree smile of Australians everywhere, and clapped him on the shoulder. "Your office already called, and we've got the bill squared away. You just get to Alice Springs, then try to relax. They'll have you up and about in no time."

He already was up and about, thanks to the new set of drugs, and Saito was unsurprised DXS had already paid the bill. One more indication to Director Thornton that he was following the plan. Right up until Tak helped him limp out of the semi-air-conditioned space and they found two gleaming Audi SUVs waiting for them in the blistering parking lot.

Tak and Jim-ba both froze, and a non-descript Caucasian male exited the nearest vehicle, met Saito's eyes with a nod, and slipped into the passenger seat of the second. Tak and Jim-ba simply stared at them as they proceeded to drive away. Saito ignored them, and instead unlocked the rover, deposited the keys on the driver's seat, and rescued his two firearms. Tak didn't put it together until Saito was actually seated in the second, still-running vehicle.

". . . hospital?" he asked, his brow furrowed. Saito shot him a grin, then opened the sat phone and powered it down. A brand new one – prosumer grade – and a paper map were on the passenger seat of the Audi, helpfully translated into Japanese, as well as a very nice pair of binoculars. Two radios were lying in the footwell with two gallon jugs of water, a military grade first aid kit, and a small canvas bag. It was the canvas bag Saito went for first.

"I'm going to get the Mac," he answered, unzipping the bag and withdrawing a pair of tan driving gloves. There was also a tan eyepatch that looked like it had been purchased at a Halloween store, but beggars couldn't be choosers. In the sunglasses tray in front of the rear view mirror Saito found a pair of very expensive Matsudas, and when the whole outfit came together, Saito pulled down the visor and examined himself.

Nakamura Otohiko glared back.

The last time he'd looked the Yakuza enforcer in the eye, Otohiko had had two. The loss of the eye in an apparent skirmish with none other than Saito's own Special Assault team was a new detail, and Saito didn't overly care for it. He was right-handed, so naturally they'd left him that eye, but the point was that sharpshooters actually kept both open even when sniping, and he was already physically compromised.

Then again, an injury to his left side neatly explained the limp, as well as the missing eye. And if it came down to shooting, he was already fucked. So the shitty eyepatch probably wasn't going to make or break anything. It just made him even more of a ridiculous manga character than he already was. Which was undoubtedly the captain's point. The text hadn't included any details of Otohiko's injuries, just that he'd gone underground afterwards, so Saito could essentially make up anything he wanted.

Assuming he got caught. Which wasn't going to happen.

Jim-ba said something, and Tak snerked. Saito gave the boys a one-eyed glare. "Go home," he ordered them. "Keep the rover out of sight. Don't go joy-riding, it's too dangerous. Do you understand?"

Both of the young men nodded, and Saito seriously considered disabling the rover to make sure they actually stayed put. But given their reception in Reception, stranding them in this town didn't seem like a nice thing to do, in light of what the boys – and their tribe – had done for them.

MacGyver was right. They were going to have to find some way to thank them.

"Do not follow me," Saito added, then pulled the door closed, left the air conditioning setting where it was, and headed back the way they'd come. The new sat phone had the coordinates he'd given them pre-programmed, including a few dirt road options that cut out a significant number of kilometers, if the SUV could handle the terrain, and he was alert enough to pick out a decent path.

He patted the pocket of his tac pants, reassuring himself that the adrenaline was still there, and took the path with the quickest ETA.

It took him longer than he would have liked. The Audi was light-colored with a light interior, which made it a little more tolerable from a soaking up heat perspective, and he was thankful whoever had programmed the route had taken fueling up into consideration. There was one and only one fuel station on the path, and Saito went ahead and used some of the pocket money in the canvas bag to purchase a couple outrageously priced five gallon containers. The trunk was technically still part of the cabin, but he figured some gasoline fumes were a small price to pay for guaranteed range. There were no cameras to dodge, and Saito briefly powered on the Italian's sat phone while he was refueling, to give DXS a point in time location. Not enough time for them to call him – enough for a ping, and nothing more.

Seeing as his own fluids had been topped off intravenously, he didn't touch the two gallons of water. There was no telling what condition Dalton was going to be in. He used the sad little convenience store attached to the fuel station to pick up protein and sugar, in the form of boiled peanuts and biscuits. For himself, he grabbed some caffeine pills.

They didn't really help. By the time he was within fifty kilometers of the general coordinate area, he knew he had to pull over or the risk of damaging the vehicle was almost certain. The Audi wasn't equipped with any kind of alarm clock or timer, so he picked up the Japanese sat phone and shot off a quick text.

The reply was almost immediate. **Do I look like a hotel concierge to you?**

Saito smirked as he replied. **Call until someone answers. If it's not me, tip off the Americans.**

He set the phone down, then reclined his seat – it adjusted on twelve different planes, yet somehow he couldn't make it comfortable – and the phone chimed.

**Captain's already received an inquiry.**

Shit. Director Thornton worked fast.

**Hold her off as long as you can.**

Then he let the phone drop into the cupholder, and closed his eyes.

That was all. All he did was close his eyes, and the goddamn phone was chirping again. Saito groaned, then pried open his eyes again – one of which was still covered in an eyepatch, the other weirdly dry - and blinked until things started coming into focus. Still light.

More than half an hour past the time he'd wanted to wake up.

He swore and grabbed the phone, confirming the time with another curse before he answered. The voice on the other end was painfully familiar. "You alive?"

Saito groaned again and relaxed against the seat a moment, then flipped up his eyepatch so he could see with both eyes. ". . . stand by."

There was a humorless chuckle. "Your gaijin boss is surprisingly persistent."

Great.

"Team's inbound. Captain's coming out himself."

Not great. "What idiot let him do that?"

There was a gusting sigh. "You're picking up bad habits from the Americans. We follow orders."

Truth. "ETA?"

"About six hours. Consider the phone compromised."

Which meant his old captain had given up the sat phone number and location to DXS. "Noted."

There was a slight pause. "You sound like shit, Saito-san." It didn't warrant a reply, and Saito used the buttons to raise the seat back, letting the motor sit him up as well. It was supposed to be a one hour nap, but it was closer to two, which meant that MacGyver –

MacGyver had been on site for hours. Plenty of time to get himself into trouble.

"Anything change in the last hour and a half?"

"Besides being reminded why we were so happy when you left? No."

Saito started the Audi, and let the fans circulate the hot air a minute before rolling up the windows. The breeze wasn't worth the dust. "I'm fifty klicks out. I'll call back when I have eyes on."

"I have your position," his old teammate confirmed sourly. "And let it be known that I'm the one who took your eye, Otohiko-chan."

Saito growled and hung up. Then he put the Audi into gear.

Fifty kilometers was about thirty miles, so his impromptu nap had been taken outside of reasonable drone distance. Still, for all he knew these guys had satellite access, so he took it a little slower than he would have liked, just to keep the dust cloud down. It finally occurred to him that he had another way to determine his range, and Saito groped around the passenger wheel well until his searching hand closed on one of the walkie talkies. He tuned it to the DSX distress band, and then cranked the volume.

And damned if he didn't hear a ping. MacGyver's tracker was up and working.

Unfortunately, as he approached the original coordinates, the ping didn't get any louder. The map indicated an area of slightly higher ground just off the road, and Saito made it in a little over forty-seven minutes. It wasn't enough altitude to significantly improve the signal strength, but it did give him a couple miles of decent viz.

He parked the Audi just far enough back on the bluff that it wasn't silhouetted, then grabbed the binoculars off the passenger seat and limped out. A grid search got him nothing. No visible aborigines, no structures. No snakes, either, and this time he was watching for them. He eventually picked up some vehicle tracks about a mile out, and selected a new vantage point. As he guided the Audi carefully over the bluff, it seemed like the tracker signal was finally gaining a little volume.

He was maybe four miles off the coordinates he'd given DXS when he finally spotted a vehicle, supervising about seven dusty, half-clothed aborigines. They were fanning out from a primitive trail, gathering what they could with knives that looked too dull to cut the roots, much less make a decent weapon against the two men with automatics. Saito observed for a few minutes, but there was no sense of alarm or urgency in the movements of the pickers or the men shouting orders, and he proceeded along the bluff, quite slowly to keep the dust down.

About a klick beyond that harvesting group, he found the main camp. Saito sent off a quick text, then turned back on the Italians' sat phone for good measure, then he set both to silent and found a nice flat snake-free rock to lay down beside.

MacGyver's tracking beacon was nice and strong. It took Saito about twenty minutes to finally find him. He was wearing someone else's clothes, including a bush hat, but the flap that was rolled up and pinned gave away a glint of the blond hair. Saito made a mental note to tell the man that one side of the brim was pinned that way to allow one to sling a rifle over their shoulder without knocking off their own hat.

Probably not what MacGyver was going to do.

Though even after a few minutes of observing him, Saito still had no idea what the hell he _was_ doing.

He seemed to be bouncing between tan supply tents, and every time he left one for the next, he had different objects in his hands. The only constant seemed to be a roll of duct tape he'd put around his wrist like a bracelet, but otherwise he swapped out twine, empty jugs, pieces of metal, and what looked like a five pound bag of flour.

Turned out Saito was right. It was flour.

That became very obvious when a nearly silent altercation began in what Saito had clocked to be the cooking tent. An aborigine working over several Army cookers said the wrong thing – or couldn't come up with the flour – and his minder didn't take too kindly to what surely sounded like the excuse of a lazy and unmotivated prisoner. When some light physical motivation failed to get the correct result, a handgun was produced, and that was right about the time Jack's partner just couldn't help himself.

Saito thinned his lips and watched the young agent slip around from the back of the cooking tent, help himself to a skillet, and pull a Samwise Gamgee on the cartel member. Somewhat remarkably, the aborigine didn't immediately flee, and after some type of conversation, MacGyver grabbed the unconscious bad guy and started dragging him to a supply tent.

Utterly unaware of the two men headed in his direction, probably also thinking about supper.

If there was a way to make the tracker MacGyver had built produce noise, Saito would have used it to warn him. Unfortunately he could only watch as the inevitable discovery occurred, followed by the inevitable scuffle. MacGyver managed to knock them down, but a few bullets placed near his ankles by a third man put a stop to the skirmish, and then he reluctantly raised his hands, and the three drug runners scooped him up and marched him to one of the two luxury 7-horse trailers that made up the only permanent structures. Considering Australia had the market cornered on extravagant multi-horse trailers, these two wouldn't raise any eyebrows on the highways, and allowed for a truly impressive amount of space to haul their loot.

As well as plenty of space to torture an American agent – or two - for the source of their intel.

Saito sighed, remaining exactly where he was, and after about half an hour he started to get a feel for how many of them there were, and where they were. They'd keep their workforce in the field until they lost the light, which was going to be hours from now. ETA for the cavalry was still a little over three hours, which meant there was going to be some overlap between twilight – which was an excellent time to attack, from their perspective – and the highest number of civilians in the line of fire. Also, and he was telling himself it was a simple threat assessment, and not _worry_ , Saito honestly wasn't sure how well MacGyver was going to hold out, SERE training or no. Once they seriously started hurting his younger partner, Dalton was going to lose his cool.

And there was a fairly nice BWM SUV down there, among the much more native-looking pick-up trucks. If the Yakuza had decided to send interrogators, that was exactly what they'd be driving.

Saito weighed his options, then bellycrawled away from the edge, and rolled painfully onto his back. From there he fished the prosumer sat phone out of his pocket and texted the intel out to both his old team and DXS. It was still on silent, and he'd missed three calls. He figured that was excusable; he might very well have been somewhere he couldn't make noise or take calls.

He certainly was going to be soon.

Getting back to the SUV was a little harder than it had been earlier, and as soon as he made the driver's seat he fished one of the two Epi pens out of his pocket and jammed the autoinjector into his thigh. Then he consulted the map, started up the SUV, and crept his careful way north until he could be sure the dust wouldn't give him away.

He also cranked the A/C. Being hot and sweaty wouldn't necessarily help his cover. Belatedly he remembered to flip the stupid eyepatch back down.

His hand was shaking slightly from the adrenaline.

It took him around twenty or so minutes to find the dirt road that led to the temporary camp, and another ten after that before the horse trailers came back into view. They did indeed have a lookout, a Middle Eastern guy, mid-thirties, Kalashnikov. The rifle was a fairly recent model, modded. Saito made a mental note to come back and get it later if he needed it.

The guy had the rifle pointed towards the sky, cradled against his arm, and merely held up a palm. The very picture of calm indifference.

The ghost of Saito's older brother whispered in his ear again. _They just caught an intruder, and no one told the lookout?_

Didn't matter. Even if it was a trap, it was a trap for whoever they thought was backing MacGyver up. And Nakamura Otohiko wasn't that dude. He gave the guy a cold look but brought the Audi to a halt.

The man blinked at him. He didn't blink back.

At some point he realized simply staring wasn't going to make Saito roll the window down, and he finally reached out and rapped on the glass. "Who're you?"

Saito didn't roll down the window, and he didn't reply, other than to look about three percent less amused. Then he took his foot off the brake and rolled right past him.

He chose a parking spot near the other trucks and BMW, but far enough out that he could make a quick retreat in at least three directions, put the Audi in park, and turned off the engine. He left the water jugs where they were – no one would question why a man like Nakamura would have basic survival supplies – and took a deep sniff of the interior of the Audi. MacGyver had stripped him pretty early into the multiple days of on and off dying, because he actually didn't smell too bad. Probably whatever that white stuff had been had helped. Nakamura was known to go on a bender or two in his lifetime, so the idea that he had been called out of mothballs following his injury to deal with these Americans had some chance of flying.

He didn't plan on being here long enough to find out.

The lookout had abandoned his post to approach a few steps, and Saito eased out of the car, favoring his left leg. He made the pain look higher, like it was more in his hip, and headed directly for the closer trailer – the same one MacGyver had been dragged into almost forty minutes ago.

The lookout didn't call out to him again.

Nor did anyone prevent him from opening the door to the cabin portion of the luxury trailer, revealing a sumptuous mobile home that was nicer than most hotel rooms. The aisle was plenty wide enough to accommodate him, and three Japanese men gathered around a tablet looked up as he let the door slam behind him.

They all eyed one another up and down. Two were the men he'd seen earlier, who had collected MacGyver. The third was dressed a little more crisply, and was being given plenty of space.

He was also someone Saito thought he should probably recognize.

That guy seemed to have the same instinct. He sneered. "Who the fuck are you?" he asked, in the aggressive drawl of all Yakuza. He spoke in Japanese, and didn't use any honorifics.

Nakamura Otohiko had dealt with people like him before.

Saito didn't show a single emotion. He ignored the man, now focused on the tablet that he could partially see. It looked like a Google map.

"Don't ignore me when I'm talking to you!" the other man spat, and Saito gave the spares the coldest look he could manage with only one eye. Apparently the eyepatch helped, because they both eased back from the table.

". . . why not?" Saito finally replied, in neutral Japanese, and after he'd studied the map another moment, and was quite sure it was the southern end of Australia, he fixed the Yakuza foot soldier with that same cold eye. "The American does."

The gang member's face screwed up in rage, and he took a single step forward. "Who the fuck do you think you are-"

That was all Saito let him say. Most of the yelling was bluster, social rules dictated that he be allowed to bellow to his heart's content, so the guy's hands weren't in a good position to block an attack. His angle by the table further impeded his ability to move freely, so Saito punched him in the Adam's apple.

The man dropped like a sack of rice, both hands clamped around his throat, and then Saito limped past him, towards the livestock portion of the trailer. No one else spoke.

A sharp, earthy odor hit him as soon as he opened the door, the air in the back of the trailer a good twenty degrees hotter than the cabin. Someone was muttering in English, but otherwise it was quiet, and Saito let the door close behind him, adjusting to the light. The windows to the trailer were open, trying to tempt a breeze, and the stainless steel stall walls hid much of the compartment from him. The closest stall was more than three-quarters full of dirty, strong-smelling roots.

It masked the scent of blood quite well.

Saito limped around the high stall wall to the aisle, where he found a man standing about midway down the trailer. The guy was inspecting the stained tape around his knuckles and shaking his head. The muttering wasn't coming from him.

Further down the aisle, two more men were gathered near the furthest stall, heads bowed in quiet conference. Both had handguns tucked into their belts. Also not the source of the muttering.

So he still had two guys behind him, and at least three in here, two of them armed. The odds were definitely not in his favor.

Without hesitation Saito headed for the man wearing the bloody boxing tape. The guy didn't bat an eye at his approach, still trying to find the edge of the tape so he could unwind it. Apparently the punching was done, at least temporarily. The boxer was Middle Eastern, a rather short, wiry guy who moved very fluidly. Saito immediately marked him as the biggest threat.

He also found the source of the muttering.

Jack Dalton was half dangling, half lying in the middle of the stall, his wrists handcuffed to the top, opposite rails of the steel partitions. He was a ball of blood, sweat, and bruises, and his almost sing-song muttering was no clearer now than it had been from the other side of the trailer. He rolled his head to the right, trying to get a look at the newcomer through his swollen eyes, and the muttering broke off into a thin, dry laugh.

A fairly happy sounding one.

Saito didn't let his expression shift in the slightest. He also tilted his head, in the same direction Jack had, and tried to tell him silently to shut the fuck up. Jack started laughing harder.

Definitely drugged. Definitely not walking out without help. Possibly about to blow his cover wide open.

"How many of you _are_ there?" The boxer sounded more annoyed than alarmed, and Saito gave Jack one more warning look, that made him actually close his eyes with the intensity of his giggling, then gave a short, sharp sigh. Without answering, he straightened his neck, then turned for the two Japanese men at the end of the trailer, both now looking right at him.

He didn't recognize either one of them.

"Where is the other?" he inquired, keeping his voice soft and neutral, and the taller of the two men at the end of the trailer stiffened.

"Who the hell are you?" It was only slightly more polite than the previous gang member had been.

Saito took a deep, cleansing breath, as if irritated that he was going to have to repeat his query, and a thin Texas drawl came out of his mouth instead of his own voice.

". . . ooo, you stepped in it now, hoss."

Nakamura wouldn't be moved, so Saito didn't do anything. He simply stood there.

". . . he's'a . . . a . . . leg . . ." Saito heard Jack shift slightly, the handcuffs clinking on metal, but he didn't look back at him, keeping a steady, cold eye on the two men that had doubtlessly been sent to deal with Jack.

The interrogators.

" . . . som'thin' happen?" It was Jack's version of worried, but his voice was so weak and hoarse that someone who didn't know him probably couldn't tell. Saito decided to head him off.

"This one is known to us. Jack Dalton. CIA." He never took his eyes off the other two interrogators. "Where is the other?"

Even if Jack didn't remember much Japanese, he was clearly able to pick out his name, or at the very least three letters from the English alphabet. " . . . heeeyyy . . ."

The other Japanese men failed to hide their surprise, and the shorter man found his voice first. "What? How –" But then he cut himself off as something seemed to dawn on him. Saito didn't know what it was and he didn't care. He headed toward the stall they were standing in front of, hoping that getting out of Jack's line of sight would cause him to stop talking.

Not that anything would really cause Jack Dalton to stop talking. Nothing but sleep and death.

". . . whaddaya . . . wait . . ."

One of the interrogators touched the other on the arm, signaling him to back up, and Saito limped over to the stall and glanced in.

MacGyver was also awake, kneeling in the otherwise empty stall with his hands bound behind him. The hat was gone and there was a bruise forming on his left cheekbone, but otherwise he seemed generally to be in one piece. He glowered up at his captors, not a shred of surprise or recognition on his face.

Saito regarded him. MacGyver glared back.

"We were not told you that you had been sent for," the shorter of the two interrogators said, his tone a touch more respectful. "Do you recognize him?"

"No," Saito replied immediately. "Have any others from the nursery been found?" The more doubt he could instill in them the better. MacGyver looked like he was quite capable of moving under his own power, which unfortunately meant that he would be the one to take on the others while Saito got Jack out. The more people Saito could get out of the trailer, the higher the odds that the three of them lived.

The stainless steel would stop handgun bullets, but that Kalashnikov would rip through the trailer walls like they weren't there. If they took these guys, it would have to be quiet. No gunshots.

". . . hey . . . where'd'ya'go?"

One of the interrogators looked past Saito, towards the stall where Jack was still quietly calling. The other frowned. "No. He's the only one we've seen so far."

Saito entered the stall, trying to keep their attention wholly focused on himself, and MacGyver refused to cower. In truth, Saito didn't want him to. Not yet. He drew his knife from its sheath and placed it under the younger agent's chin.

"Stand," he instructed coldly, in English. When MacGyver didn't do it fast enough, in typical disrespectful young person fashion, Saito simply lifted the knife. The cut wasn't deep by any means, but MacGyver's eyes widened in surprise, and he yelped when his legs, which were half asleep, caused him to stumble and appear to cut himself more deeply.

"Oi, mate –"

It was close enough to Saito's ear to a genuine Australian accent, which meant it was probably good enough to fool the two interrogators, as well. Saito dragged the knife around MacGyver's throat without any sort of showmanship, smearing what little blood he'd drawn to give the appearance of more, shifting the young man any way he wanted, inspecting him critically until he was behind MacGyver, and he focused on his hands.

The wet wipes he'd used earlier hadn't done the job. There was still oil and grease under his nails and embedded in his knuckles. Not enough to let him work himself out of the cotton ropes he was bound with, of course. But enough.

Saito brought the knife down, using it to force MacGyver's wrists up, and he elicited another little yelp out of the agent at the sharp angle, taking his dear sweet time examining them. Once he identified the knot, he twisted his lips and cleanly sliced one of the pieces of rope. MacGyver flinched hard, even made his exhale tremble, as though he'd been cut again.

From the other stall, Jack growled something unintelligible.

"He's a thief," Saito concluded in Japanese, shoving MacGyver roughly into the stall wall, as if to get him out of the way, and then he used the material covering MacGyver's right shoulder to wipe the blood off the blade. MacGyver played the part well, no longer making eye contact, even shaking a little. "I saw a pickup off trail, three kilometers back. Carburetors in the bed. And the little schoolboy here has oil under his fingernails." He bared his teeth at MacGyver, causing him to blanch a little, and press himself further against the stall wall. "Check your vehicles."

The shorter of the two Japanese interrogators gestured, and the man still watching Dalton reluctantly backed off, and headed back towards the cab of the trailer.

One down, two to go.

But the taller one still had eyes on Dalton, and they cut back to Saito suspiciously. "How do you know that one?"

Jack was still mumbling threats – probably in response to MacGyver's voice. Whatever drug they'd given him, it must have been given by these guys. It was damn effective, they were probably just waiting for it to take hold like they meant it before they moved the interrogation right back to him.

On the positive side, it meant the two interrogators in front of him had recently arrived, and some noise from the trailer was to be expected.

On the negative side, it meant they were fresh and ready to work.

Saito didn't move from MacGyver's space, giving him an excuse to remain standing and a little cover to work the ropes loose. "The American agent has done work with an . . . overly persistent special assault team in Tokyo. They owe me an eye." He let his gaze slip back towards the middle of the trailer, to ensure that the Middle Eastern fighter was well and truly gone. "Perhaps he will pay their debt."

Unluckily for them, the Arab boxer had not left the trailer. He was standing in the doorway, apparently passing the instructions to check the vehicles on to the men in the cab, but he hadn't stepped through, and Saito had a sneaking suspicion that he wasn't going to. If he'd been working on Jack all this time, he'd want to see the interrogation through.

And Saito was fairly sure that he couldn't take him. Not in his current condition. Neither could MacGyver.

So much for not using guns.

Saito limped towards Jack, as if he intended to take the man's eye right that very second, and the shorter of the two men behind him fell in step behind him. "I heard Nakamura-san disappeared."

It was true that Nakamura Otohiko hadn't been seen since Jack Dalton had recruited Akatsutsumi Saito to DXS, roughly seven months ago. Since his cover had only gotten revised about that many hours ago, these guys certainly wouldn't have heard anything. A Yakuza enforcer disappearing off the map typically meant only one thing – that he had disappointed one of the syndicates and been quietly disposed of. Depending on the level of disappointment, he may have done the disposing himself, to save them the inconvenience. As far as Saito knew, none of the enforcers had ever retired. Some had become personal bodyguards, but they tended to die in service.

In this case, the truth couldn't hurt. "He did," Saito said shortly, and was unable to buy any further time before he came to a stop in front of Jack's stall. Jack rolled his head up his shoulder again, trying to get a look, but this time his skull was just a little too heavy, and he let it drop, his chin hanging low against his chest.

He was done. And even in defeat, he couldn't shut his goddamn mouth.

" . . . Nakamura . . . Oto . . . Hiko-chan," he managed, and then laughed, like it was a joke. The laugh pulled the attention of their Arab boxer back to them, and Saito heard the door between the trailer and the cab close.

Now or never.

"How did you know we had captured another?" the taller interrogator, the one near MacGyver, asked suddenly. Saito paused, as if irritated that he was being questioned, then turned, so that his back was to Jack, and his right foot was bearing all his weight.

"Your shit-for-brains driver," he snapped, quite impolitely, and then he threw out his right arm as if gesturing in the direction of the cab.

Only his knife had still been in his right hand, and now it was sailing through the air to find a new home in the Arab's chest.

At the same time, he struck out with his left, but without being able to put any weight on his left foot, he wasn't quite able to stretch far enough to land more than a glancing blow on the shorter of the two Yakuza interrogators. MacGyver took the opportunity to hurl himself out of his stall, shoulder-checking the taller interrogator into the trailer wall, and Saito pivoted on his right foot, trying to get enough space to draw his pistol.

He got it free, but a deft foot knocked it right out of his hand, and Saito was suddenly occupied with trying to defend himself from someone who knew he had a bad leg. He blocked a knife but wasn't able to get it away from the other man, and then the shelving unit that ran the length of the trailer, holding various supplies and utensils, suddenly gave way, dumping its contents onto his opponent with a deafening crash of metal on metal.

It was more than enough. Saito caught a metal bucket as it was falling, spun once again on his right foot, and brought it around like a blade. He nailed the distracted interrogator in the side of the head and let his momentum carry him back around, looking for the Middle Eastern boxer. The bucket connected with a Smith and Wesson, which remarkably didn't go off, but it was flung out of reach, and the man who had been holding it was on him in an instant. He sent them both crashing in the stall wall beside one of Jack's handcuffed wrists, and Saito blocked what was meant to be a fatal blow to his throat.

He could see that his knife had hit the Arab, his chest was bloodied but the wound didn't seem to be slowing him down at all. Saito blocked another head-strike and took a direct kick to his left leg for his troubles. It buckled, sending him down on one knee. He blocked his opponent's left knee reflexively as it came for his face, and then there was the sound of something heavy striking flesh, and the boxer rag dolled and toppled bonelessly to the ground.

Behind him, MacGyver caught himself, breathing hard, a monster wrench in his right hand. He froze when he got a good look at his partner.

Saito stayed on the ground, rifling through the boxer's pockets for the handcuff keys. MacGyver also took a knee, in front of Jack, and cupped Dalton's chin in his hands, trying to get a better look at the lacerations on his face.

"Hey big guy," he said softly, in his curiously deep voice. "Sorry about the wait."

Jack made a noise that might have been happy. "Y'shouldn . . . shouldn' be here . . ."

Saito found and wordlessly passed MacGyver the keys, and the young man gently released Jack's face to get to work on the handcuffs. "Yeah, there's a lot of that going around."

Saito presumed that comment was directed at him, and struggled to his feet with a hiss. "Could you have made a little more noise there, _bakayaro_? Maybe shot a few holes in the ceiling? We got thirty seconds max before someone comes to check out the racket." The soft clank of metal attracted his attention, and Saito glared at a small can of oil as it rolled across the aisle to bonk into the wall beside its brother. The fallen metal shelf itself was mostly blocking the aisle – probably the only reason the Arab hadn't managed to kill him – and Saito transferred his glare to MacGyver, who was easing Jack against one wall of the stall. "How the fuck did you do that, by the way?" Last he'd seen MacGyver was grappling with the interrogator, and suddenly half the trailer was falling over.

"Physics," MacGyver grunted, propping Dalton up as best he could. Jack reached up and clumsily patted him on the cheek. From what Saito had seen, the drug cocktail was narcotics based, and he fished the other Epi pen out of his cargo pants and pressed it into MacGyver's hands.

"We gotta get him up. I can't carry him."

MacGyver accepted the old Epi pen, squinting at the label a second before pressing it into Jack's thigh. "Is this how you're managing to walk around right now?"

If only it were that easy. The kick to his left shin had set his calf on fire, and the painkillers Steve Irwin had given him were more than halfway burned. "Your minions got me to a clinic. DXS and Japanese Special Assault are on their way to these coordinates, ETA about three hours. We're on our own til then."

"Nothing to worry about, then," MacGyver said lightly – possibly for Jack's benefit – and straightened, using his long legs to clamber over the detritus and the downed shelving unit. "There's a door behind us – get Jack on his feet if you can, I'll be right back."

Saito didn't bother to argue, taking MacGyver's place beside Dalton, and he watched the adrenaline hit the rest of the soup in his blood. Jack managed a little deeper of a breath that set him immediately to coughing, and Saito grimaced in sympathy but still put the other man's right arm over his shoulder, and used his right leg to pull them both upright.

"Shit, you weigh a ton," he huffed, trying to juggle their weight without faceplanting on the opposite stall wall. "You eat rocks for breakfast?"

Jack groaned, not helping much if at all, and Saito swore quietly and wondered if they'd broken his ankles to keep him immobilized. He had his feet flat on the floor but his legs were jelly. Normally you'd want to keep your hostage at least semi-mobile, but since his interrogation chamber was fully mobile, maybe they hadn't bothered.

There was literally nothing they could do about it in the time they had. Broken or not, he was going to walk on them.

"Dalton!" he snapped, and the agent maybe gave him five more percent. Not enough. "Listen to me, you gaijin piece of shit, either lay down and die or get your ass in gear!" He lurched forward a step, bracing his right shoulder on the stall wall to balance as he limped forward on his left. Jack coughed again, and shuffled half a step.

Metal screamed against metal, and Saito whipped towards the front of the trailer to see MacGyver shifting one of the stall walls from the right side of the trailer to the left. The shelf had fallen just shy of it, and he was able to yank the partition in place and lock it. As Saito dragged himself and Jack into the aisle, MacGyver wound up a kick and snapped the locking clamp off shear with the metal partition.

Creating even more obstacles for whoever was in the cab to have to cross to follow them.

MacGyver immediately turned and grabbed the second partition, dragging it into the way as far as the downed shelf would let him, and by the time he'd made it back to their position Jack was moving under about a quarter of his own power, and Saito had reached the door.

"Grab my gun," he huffed at the young agent, maneuvering himself and Jack out of the way. The door opened out, which would give them a bit of cover for handguns, but again, if that Kalashnikov was nearby, it was going to be no more useful than tin foil.

And damned if MacGyver didn't recover his pistol from the trailer floor and _hand it back to him_.

"I'll draw their fire. You get Jack to the nearest tent."

Saito swore at the man, then immediately regretted wasting the breath. "You realize all our vehicles are the other direction, right?"

He got a cock-eyed grin in reply. "You mean the direction you intentionally sent all the bad guys in? And I did, actually. Disable their vehicles. Where do you think I got this?" He lightly tugged the front of his borrowed shirt for emphasis, setting his feet to bolt as soon as he threw open the door.

Saito just stared at him. Well, that could explain what he'd been doing for the first few hours before he'd gotten eyes on the idiot. "You want a merit badge for that, boy scout?" And even if he had taken out the pickups – "My vehicle's with theirs."

"Worry about that later. On three."

Jack picked up his head a little, still having difficulty catching his breath, and did make an effort to lurch forward when MacGyver sprinted out of the trailer. Saito let them stumble out a second after, spinning again on his right leg to prop Jack against the trailer wall so he could take down any shooters, but there wasn't anyone in sight. MacGyver made it to the cooking tent, and Saito gave it a five count before he put his arm around Dalton again and more than half-carried him the distance. His own left leg was holding, if only because it had been wrapped like Steve Irwin had meant it, and he got them both under the burlap as fast as he could.

MacGyver was near the back of the tent, his eyes and hands darting over the temporary shelves, and Saito realized belatedly they were not alone.

Folded up just behind the line of three barbecues was the cook. He was staring at them with wide white eyes.

Saito held up his right hand – holding his gun – palm out, with the barrel pointed at the ceiling. "Easy," he tried.

The aborigine's white eyes shot towards MacGyver, who had looked up and frozen in place, and then Mac threw himself behind a short stack of burlap sacks. Saito immediately dropped, taking Dalton down with him, and he did his best to roll the other agent up against some cardboard boxes, trying to get them out of sight.

Jack barked out a cry of pain and Saito slapped his left hand over his mouth, readying his pistol. Not two seconds later he heard a couple pairs of feet sprinting towards them.

Someone threw themselves against the makeshift counter, craning their neck to look around the barbeques, and he just so happened to look the aborigine's way first. The man shrank further against the cooking stove as the barrel of a Kalashnikov rifle slapped down on the counter beside the drug runner.

"Which way?!" he shouted, and the aborigine flinched. Jack struggled a little under Saito's hand, seeking air, and Saito held him tighter, unable to get a clear line on the gunman. The aborigine's wild eyes dropped and he looked right at them.

Then he pointed, in that long-armed, lazy way of aborigines the world over, towards the tents down the row.

The drug runner took off at a dead run, his partner on his heels, and Saito gave it a three count before he released Dalton. The injured agent immediately started coughing again.

Saito shushed him, looking towards the back of the tent, and sandy blond hair finally poked up from behind the stack of fabric sacks. He and MacGyver exchanged a quick glance, then MacGyver hopped back up and crossed to the front of the tent, putting a hand on the aborigine's shoulder and speaking in a low voice. The man listened to him, then nodded and gestured, and MacGyver darted to another shelf, grabbing a few small metal camp stoves.

Saito turned back to Dalton, who had finished coughing, and was watching them through half-lidded black eyes. He sucked down a slightly deeper breath, then gave Saito a feeble nod.

He got it. Stay still, stay quiet.

Saito nodded back, then crept to where MacGyver was tearing into a box of steel wool. "That was the lookout who just came by, cars are probably open. I'll get us some wheels and pick you up on the back side."

"Too risky," the other agent whispered, quickly pulling the steel wool into a thin rectangle. "I have an idea. Stay put, keep him quiet." Then he hurried to the back edge of the tent, listened for a moment, and rolled under the burlap before his shadow disappeared.

This time Saito didn't even bother to curse. He motioned to the aborigine to stay down and quiet. The man gave him a hesitant nod, then looked towards Jack. Saito checked the shelves for a first aid kit as he moved back to the front of the tent, but didn't see one.

Of course there were kerosene camp stoves and steel wool, and why the fuck couldn't he just use _those_ to patch Dalton up. Since apparently they were absolutely critical for whatever the hell MacGyver was doing.

Jack hadn't moved even a little from where Saito had shoved him up against the boxes, and he quickly patted him down. Ankles and legs seemed intact, just weak. Several of the fingers on his left hand were dislocated, and the hand itself was grossly swollen. His right pinky was also definitely broken, but they'd left the rest of them intact so he could write. His half-shredded shirt was too soggy with sweat and blood to tell where the injuries were, but his back felt like one giant mass of long eggs, so they'd either cut strips out of him or horsewhipped him. Or both. Saito didn't have anything on hand to wrap him with, and he wasn't bleeding badly. There was some blood smeared on the boxes behind him, but he wasn't dripping too much, wasn't leaving a super-obvious trail.

The way he'd been handcuffed to the stall partitions was essentially a modified crucifixion; besides causing immense pain it made it very difficult for the victim to breathe, but getting his arms down and the pressure off his chest should have helped. It didn't seem like it had. Dalton was still out of breath, and deep breathing seemed beyond him. Busted ribs, maybe, or something worse. His pulse was rapid, but that could have been the adrenaline, his own or the stuff they'd added.

Best they could do was get him the hell out of here, get some water into him, and wait for medical to get him during exfil.

Jack moaned when Saito found a particularly painful place on his chest, and Saito quietly clucked his tongue.

"Quit whining. On the plus side I think they straightened your nose."

It took Dalton a few seconds, but then Saito managed to coax a half-hearted glare out of him, and he patted his friend on the shoulder, gently. "So this partner of yours . . . was he always a pain in the ass, or is that your doing?"

The glare turned into a weak, but goofy, smile. "Uncle Sam . . . issued 'im that way," Dalton slurred. "Wouldn' 'shange 'im . . . prolly couldn' if I tried."

"Jack Dalton admitting he can't do something?" Saito whispered in mock surprise, keeping an ear cocked for any footsteps. "In that case, bet you can't run half a mile."

The fond little smile didn't go anywhere. "Mac jus' ran off, didn' he."

A quick glance at the back of the tent showed he hadn't returned. "Looks that way," Saito murmured. "He coming back?"

The smile bloomed into a full – if painful looking – grin, that caused Dalton's split lip to glisten with fresh blood. "You'll know," is all he said, then grimaced and swallowed a cough. "Si . . . I ain' . . . feelin' so good . . ."

"No shit?"

There was a tremendous explosion, that Saito felt reverberate in his chest as he flinched in surprise, and he instinctively covered the injured man in front of him as a second explosion, relatively minor compared to the first, seemed to rip through the very tent they were in. He heard debris raining down on the fabric ceiling of the tent, and he kept his head down as he peered over his shoulder, finding the aborigine right where he left him, stuffed almost under the barbecue. He barely heard the scuffle of feet through dirt, and MacGyver was just suddenly _there_ , right beside them. He slammed a sweaty hand into Saito's back to catch himself as he slid to a stop.

"Let's go, let's go," he called urgently, and then sprinted across the tent to the aborigine. Saito gave Jack a bracing smile, then threw his right arm over his shoulder again, and hauled the agent upright.

Mac and his new friend held the back of the tent up enough to allow Saito and Jack to stagger under it, and then they were off, playing the world's slowest and shittiest game of three-legged hopscotch back behind the smoking ruins of supply tents. The black smoke did an admirable job of hiding their movements, and the explosions seemed to have occurred near the front of the tents, because the backs were intact enough to partially protect them from the heat.

"Wrong way, genius!" Saito hissed as they moved their way further and further from the Audi. Without wheels, distraction or no they'd be caught –

"Truck," Mac hissed back, gesturing forward, and Saito grit his teeth and followed him.

Jack was down to about ten percent power by the time the old beater came into view around the billowing smoke – outfitted with a metal cage in the back to transfer lumber, or slaves, whichever you needed – and Saito growled threats at the dead weight hanging off his left shoulder as a few bullets starting pinging off the truck bed. They were wide, handguns and a good thirty yards back, and the cook leaped easily into the bed, turning to wave them on. MacGyver had dashed for the cab of the truck, and red flashed in his hands as he broke out his swiss army knife to start hotwiring it.

Saito found himself wondering idly how the interrogators had been so sloppy as to leave it with him. Then he figured MacGyver must have grabbed it as they were fleeing the trailer. He had no more time to ponder when Jack gave up the ghost a few yards short of the truck bed, and if not for the aborigine's strong hands, they both would have lost a couple teeth on the tailgate.

Saito and the cook muscled Jack into the pickup, rolling him onto his back with his legs still hanging off when the engine turned over. Saito wasted no time in limping over to the driver's side door and yanking Mac out.

"I'll drive, you make sure he doesn't fall out the back," he instructed, and for once the young man did exactly what he was ordered to do without comment. Saito didn't even wait to make sure the kid was in the truck before he threw her into gear and floored it, ripping off the stupid eyepatch as he did so.

Driving a brand new Audi SUV over rough terrain sucked. In an old Nissan pickup, it was kind of like riding a mechanical bull. At least two wheels were out of contact with the ground at any given moment, and it didn't get much better when Saito managed to pick up a trail. It might take them right back out to the men in the field, which was another place they didn't want to be, but it was better than going back.

"You all good back there?" he shouted through the back window, never taking his eyes off the nonexistent road.

". . . so I think maybe you were right," MacGyver shouted back, and Saito finally glanced at the rear view mirror, giving him an excellent shot of the back of the agent's head.

"Which part?" he called back, though he had a sneaking suspicion he already knew when something that sounded _just_ like a bullet zipped by the open driver's side window.

"We maybe should have taken the Audi," Jack's partner called back, a little sheepishly, and then he ducked down, and not forty yards behind them was a shiny, brand new SUV. It didn't matter that the keys were in Saito's pocket. The Yakuza did a tidy business stealing cars, and any driver worth his salt would know how to hotwire one.

And if Saito wasn't mistaken, that stick hanging out the passenger window was a Kalashnikov.

He gritted his teeth and pushed the accelerator harder. It acted like the volume button on a radio. Engine noise increased, but that was it.

"What, you ran out of kerosene and steel wool?!" he snapped back out the window, then reached for the small of his back to pull out his pistol. "Because I swear to whatever god you believe in, if you don't take this gun and return fire I will _end you_!"

"I got an idea!" the agent shouted back, then disappeared from view.

"Damn it, son of a bitch!" Saito shouted back – belatedly he realized in Japanese, not that it mattered since he had no idea how much of the language MacGyver actually knew – and he tried every trick in the book to get more distance between them and the Audi.

Unfortunately, all his defensive driving training had been in the streets of Tokyo. Put him on a crotch rocket or a squad car, even a limo, and he'd get you out of a jam. In the outback, in a beater, trying not to throw three passengers from the bed, he was fucked. It was all he could do to keep them on the rough, narrow trail and not take out the transmission with an unfortunately placed rock.

A glance at the rear view mirror confirmed that they were losing ground. It also looked like MacGyver was disassembling part of the lumber cage, and he'd set the cook to the same task.

Maybe he'd been a javelin thrower in high school. At this point Saito wouldn't be surprised by anything.

Two minutes and four bulletholes in the truck later, he discovered he was incorrect.

"Tell me when we get near a choke point!" MacGyver shouted through the window, and it took Saito a second to figure out what the other man meant. He was holding a long bar from the lumber cage like a staff, and had the cook on the other side of the truck, doing much the same. He figured they wanted a place where the other vehicle couldn't easily dodge right or left, and sure enough, the combination of cracked earth and wind-worn rocks up ahead gave them exactly that.

Half a mile ahead.

The Audi was still closing in, and the closer it got, the more accurate that Kalashnikov was going to get.

"Thirty seconds," Saito shouted over his shoulder. "Take cover, you're gonna get shot!" As if their pursuers could hear him, the passenger side mirror shattered. "And you're never gonna get those in the ground, it's too hard!"

"They're not going in the ground!" MacGyver called back, but he did actually duck, at least a little.

The Audi chewed up another five yards in that half-mile, and Saito found himself ducking when the window to the bed shattered, and littered the bench seat with glass.

"Five seconds!"

MacGyver popped up on one side of the bed, the cook on the other, and both hurled their metal lances at the rocks that lined the narrow dirt trail. Just like Saito had said, they didn't penetrate far into the ground. However, there was something strung between them, and the metal rods found purchase as they settled between the rocks. The Audi was too close to brake, and whatever was between the metal rods – a chain of something? – glinted in the light as the Audi drove right over it.

Caltrops. The kid had built caltrops – what the Americans called a spike strip.

Saito saw both the front tires pop, with little poofs of compressed air, but after weaving wildly for a few seconds, the Audi recovered, and started making back up the lost distance.

MacGyver was still clinging to the side of the truck bed, staring out behind them like a statue, and then his head tilted slightly to the side, like he couldn't quite figure out what he was looking at.

Goddammit. "Run flats!" Saito bellowed through the back window. His team had gotten him the best equipment they could, and that would have included run flats. They probably had another twenty miles in them in this terrain.

More than enough to get that AK in range.

Worse, after their choke point the outback opened up, back into flatter desert, and a few bullets whizzed through the cab and out the front windshield.

They were not going to win this race.

"MacGyver!" he shouted, and as soon as the man was within reach he grabbed him by the collar of his stolen shirt and bodily hauled him halfway into the truck cab. He flinched in Saito's grasp, clearly surprised, and Saito jerked his chin at the steering column. "Take the wheel and try not to flip the truck!"

He let go of it, bracing his right foot on the accelerator and mashing it to the floor as he twisted himself out the driver's side window, facing the rear of the truck. He'd been right; the Audi was close enough now that he could see the driver was indeed the Yakuza he'd throat punched, the interrogator's driver. And that damned lookout.

He leveled his pistol – as best he could while half dead, riding a mechanical bull hurtling down the road at sixty miles per hour – and put a couple holes in the Audi's windshield.

The driver didn't flinch. This part, they were both very familiar with.

Saito felt a hand clamp onto the back of his pants before the truck lurched to the left and bucked, and he would have fallen out if not for MacGyver. He barely managed to keep his right foot wedged on the accelerator, and then the truck veered hard right, and the Audi came back into view.

They were dodging rocks, and the Audi had no choice but to make the same hard left turn, and expose its side.

Saito fired a single round, and the Audi went up in a ball of flames.

He slid back into the cab, right onto a pile of gritty safety glass, and took the wheel away from MacGyver and his foot off the accelerator. He brought the truck around, just to make sure, but the Audi was toast. It was remarkably still on all four wheels, and Saito quietly mourned the loss of the two gallons of water he'd just set on fire.

MacGyver was still dangling half-inside the cab, and had reacquired his head tilt, like a confused Malinois. After a second, he shifted a little so he was sitting.

"Jack's going to be upset he missed that," he finally concluded.

The reminder had Saito twisting in his seat, looking into the bed of the truck, but Jack was still in it, being held securely by the cook, who had a huge, blinding white grin on his face. Saito returned it, and every bit of strength left in his body seemed to float away like the stupid white souls in kids' animes.

"You take out the tractors hauling those two trailers?"

MacGyver huffed, turning so his back was against the wall of the cab, and settled into the truck bed like even he was tired, eyes on his partner. "You mean while I was disabling all the other vehicles _and_ setting up explosives in the tents?"

"Is that what you were doing?" Saito inquired mildly. "It's so obvious now, what else would one do with duct tape and flour."

MacGyver had the stones to snort. "And a couple pineapples."

Saito thought about that _way_ too hard before it finally occurred to him. Right. Army EOD. A pineapple was a hand grenade. "Well, that explains at least one of those explosions."

The cook eased Dalton flat onto his back, now that the stock car racing was at least temporarily finished, and MacGyver peeled off his long-sleeved shirt – still bearing a little of his own blood – and folded it into both a pillow and a sun visor for Jack. "Actually, the grenade was more for dispersing the flour and then igniting it than it was just for the bang." Then he shook his head, and his voice took on a more serious lilt. "I have no idea what was in that second tent. Not more grenades, I can tell you that."

Saito thought about that a second. "Because we'd all be full of shrapnel?"

MacGyver snapped his fingers and gestured towards Saito, though his attention never really left Dalton. "Bingo."

". . . so you're telling me you almost accidentally blew us all up."

The younger agent continued fussing over his partner. "It's not like I had time to inventory every crate-"

"That giant military stamp on the outside of those anti-tank rockets is easy to overlook."

MacGyver huffed again. "Trust me, if it had been a crate of anti-tank rockets, we wouldn't be sitting here hypothesizing about it."

That was probably true, and brought them back to the matter at hand. That they had essentially trapped a group of really bad men in the middle of the outback – as well as themselves – and backup was still three hours out.

Saito winced, and dug his prosumer satphone out of his pocket. It was still on silent, but there was currently a call coming in. He decided to answer it.

"Kato525."

As he'd expected, a robot informed him that the line was being secured, and after a click, he could hear a faint murmur of voices in the background. "Saito?"

"Director," he confirmed. "Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I've recovered agents Dalton and MacGyver. We're –" He did some quick math. "-about six miles from our previous coordinates-"

"Five point seven," she corrected. "We received your smoke signal."

Saito felt his eyebrow quirk, and at MacGyver's inquiring look, he put the phone on speaker. So they definitely had satellite. Good. They could give them a warning before any other vehicles showed up to investigate. "Roughly half the enemy force is down. Most of their vehicles have been disabled, but the men still out in the field are all armed, all still with hostages."

"Understood," she replied, sounding unfazed. "They've already started to rally at their base of operations. What's your condition?"

Depending how good the satellite was, she could probably see Dalton. "One mobile, one semi-mobile, one non-mobile. Dalton needs medical ASAP."

"So does Agent Saito," MacGyver chimed in, without being invited. "And there are likely injuries among the civilians."

"We're isolating communications for that region of Australia, As soon as we're certain we've cut off outgoing signals, we'll have additional medevac dispatched from Alice Springs," Thornton assured him. "And speaking of communications . . . do we know what, if anything, Agent Dalton may have given them?"

"No ma'am," Saito answered, before MacGyver could. "It appears the Yakuza dispatched interrogators and they arrived today. Protocol is to report in nightly. If you can keep communications jammed, anything they know is still local only."

Odds were, if MacGyver hadn't gotten himself caught when he did, it would be a very different story. Even now that they were still, and Dalton was clearly unconscious, his breathing was still rapid, and though MacGyver was being subtle about it, he was monitoring Jack's pulse.

"The trailers are high tech. With any luck they're more worried about getting their vehicles up and running than destroying evidence."

"I'm not interested in luck, Agent Saito." Thornton's voice was cool. "However, in this case it's not crucial. We know how the ring operates now, and we can shut it down. The heads of this organization are back to square one whether we get their names and locations or not."

Saito suppressed a grimace at her tone. "Yes ma'am," he acknowledged.

MacGyver, however, shot Saito a quick grin. "Actually, director, I think we can get those locations for you. They have too much inventory to fully destroy in the next three hours. Both the heroin and the roots will have picked up impurities from the regions in which they were grown. If we can get some samples back to the labs, we can tell you down to ten square miles where those plants were harvested."

Not to mention the aborigines could tell them the areas they'd been forced to work. They could use that to reverse engineer travel, faces on cameras at the local regional airstrips, visa requests –

Even if they didn't get the boss, they'd put a major dent in the business.

"Don't make promises you can't keep, MacGyver," Thornton cautioned.

Oddly, that made his smile broaden. "I wouldn't dream of it, ma'am."

There was a pause, where a sigh might have been, if the microphone had been close enough to pick it up. "How's Jack?"

"Stable for now," MacGyver replied, the smile gone in an instant. "But the sooner we get him to a hospital the better."

"Okay. Sit tight. You're isolated from the other drug runners and it's a good spot for exfil. I'll have them to you in a little over two hours."

The call disconnected, and Saito bumped up the ringer volume – in case she called back – and then tucked the phone into his pocket. Then he blew out a sigh of his own.

"Trust me, that wasn't her angry voice," MacGyver told him, and settled back against the side of the truck again, keeping one of Jack's wrists firm in his grip. "She's usually okay with agents bending the rules a little if it gets the job done."

Whether the job was going to get done or not was no longer up to them – it was up to the backup DXS had sent, in the form of his old Special Assault team. "It wasn't so much bending as outright disobeying." Saito wasn't quite sure why he told the other agent that, but it made him smile a little. "Clearly you have a lot of experience in this arena."

"Disobeying orders?" His eyebrows bobbed. "Hate to rain on your parade, Saito-san, but out of the two of us, I'm the senior agent."

Saito snorted. Loudly. "By what – a month?" It was probably a lot longer than that – Saito was pretty sure Dalton had been paired with MacGyver before the brash Texan had ever set foot on Japanese soil. He certainly had been by the time Jack had managed to convince Saito to join up.

MacGyver shrugged. "I didn't write the protocol. And speaking of protocol," and those topaz blue eyes were suddenly fixed on him, "I'm fairly sure you're supposed to be in a hospital bed right now."

He was definitely starting to feel like the young man might be right. "You didn't give me much choice."

MacGyver was silent a moment. "They didn't give me _any_ choice," he said quietly, and looked back at his partner.

No one said anything for a while, the only noise was coming from the flaming Audi until the cook shifted a little, having apparently guessed that they were going to wait until it was safe to move out. Saito glanced at the gas gauge, just out of curiosity, but he was pretty sure the beater couldn't get them to civilization in less than two hours. He also wasn't completely sure he could drive it, even if the truck could.

"Thanks," MacGyver said suddenly. "For coming for us." And in that moment, in that light, covered in dust and sweat and a little blood, he didn't look like a twenty-odd year old analyst. He looked like every one of Saito's old Special Assault team looked after a rough mission.

Saito stared at him a long second, then closed his eyes and inclined his head. "I owed you my life," he said simply.

It was clear the young man understood exactly what that gesture and those words meant – and just as clear that he was speechless. But MacGyver didn't seem like a man who was often speechless, and he proved it by opening his mouth. "Owed? Wait, so you think beating up a few guys is the same as what I did for you?"

Obviously he'd made MacGyver uncomfortable, and – very much like most of the guys on his old Special Assault team – MacGyver deflected with humor. Which, in this case, Saito was willing to permit. "No, but then again I didn't try to blow you up while you were trying to save my skin. I'm taking that into account."

The blond scoffed. "One, I didn't try to blow anyone up – just tents. Two," and he held up a second finger, and then gestured at the still-burning Audi twenty yards away, "while we're on the topic of explosions, that one was much more impressive."

Saito accepted the praise without comment, and MacGyver's eyebrows twitched, then he looked towards the Audi again. "I don't think you realize the – the _astronomical_ odds of a single round penetrating a vehicle and producing that result. Television and movies aside, that just . . . just doesn't happen. It's . . ."

The two fingers stayed in the air, and the young man stilled, then seemed to be doing some kind of calculations in his head, and suddenly it clicked.

Saito smirked. ". . . you don't know how I did that, do you."

MacGyver didn't know that there had been two five gallon jugs of gasoline in the trunk, and that he had aimed not for the gas tank of the SUV – just the rear side panel.

"No," the other agent admitted, eyes still on the vehicle. "Did they make significant changes to the base chassis and the fuel harness in the last model? Because a non-tracer round would only be moving at about fifteen hundred feet per second . . . and you made that shot from twenty point two yards, which is basically sixty point six feet, so friction would have only . . ." He trailed off, and his fingers twitched a little in the air, as if he was writing.

That was about the time Saito started laughing.

The other agent looked back at him, clearly not understanding, and Saito reached through the window and roughly ruffled his hair. "I see, now, what Jack sees in you, otouto," he chuckled, and if anything, MacGyver looked even more confused.

"Little brother?" he translated questioningly.

"Trust me," Saito told him, still laughing.

-M-

" . . . an' I missed all that?"

The voice was low and gravelly, and speaking English, which didn't make much sense. Had he left the television on?

"Head's up, don't touch him."

"I wasn't going to-"

"Good, because he's a cranky SOB when he's jetlagged."

Saito left his eyes closed, but he couldn't suppress the groan. ". . . I should have known you were a demon the second I met you." This was it. He was dead, and his fate was to be forever tormented by Jack Dalton.

There was a brief silence. "Uh . . . I think 'akuma' is 'demon', I didn't catch the rest of it-"

Saito made the mental adjustment, which unfortunately brought him even closer to true wakefulness. "The director is punishing me, isn't she."

This time the low, gravelly voice chuckled deep in its chest. "Easier to secure one room than two."

Point. Saito cracked his eyes open, glaring balefully at the bright sunlight. It wasn't even _trying_ to pretend it was evening, even though it felt like it ought to be, and Saito felt like he should just roll over and sleep another eight hours. He seriously considered it before it occurred to him what bright sunlight meant.

It meant he'd already been sleeping for eight hours. At least.

He blinked, then rolled his head away from the window. He was indeed in a hospital, which wasn't a surprise. On the other side of a drawn-back curtain was a second bed, just like his, and Jack Dalton was reclining in it with a light blue bag of ice balanced over his face. Only from the tip of his nose down was visible.

What was visible was purple.

Saito blinked again, then fumbled for the bed remote so he could lean himself up. He noticed the IV, he remembered getting it, and a tray of cafeteria food, and –

As the head of the bed smoothly raised itself, Saito saw that his left leg was exposed, not under the blanket but up on a stack of pillows, wrapped from the base of his toes all the way to his knee. It wasn't fiberglass, but it was pretty stiff.

He studied it a moment, then glanced back over at Jack. On his other side, a depressingly fresh-faced MacGyver was camped out in a hospital chair, smirking at him. Outside of a bruise under his eye, a little sunburn, and a small tan-colored bandage on his neck, he looked perfectly fine.

"Can I get you anything?" The voice didn't exactly go with the smirk; it sounded like a legitimately sincere offer.

"A private room?" Saito suggested, and the smirk grew.

"Yeah, that's probably not going to happen," MacGyver said, in a tone that indicated he was not really all that sorry about it. "Alice Springs is one of the larger cities in Australia, but the hospital only has a hundred and eighty-six beds, and our op is taking up about a third of them." He did, however, get to his feet and cross the room to the built in sink and cabinet, where he started to fill a paper cup with water. "But, it's not all bad news. You're both going to be transferred back to the States tomorrow. With any luck, you'll be in your own beds tomorrow night." MacGyver carried the cup over to the little table over Saito's bed, and plunked a bendy straw into it.

"Which will be . . ." He paused, doing the calculation, and Saito accepted the cup and sucked down about half of it, "twenty-five hours of travel that will occur in sixteen and a half hours of clock time." He gave Saito a bright grin. "It's the closest thing we've got to actual time travel."

Saito swallowed an air bubble out of his throat and grimaced. "It's fucking ridiculous is what it is," he groused. "Why can't the world just decide on one goddamn time zone and be done with it." Damn, he hated flying back to the States from Japan. It was fucking lunchtime for an entire damn day.

The young agent's eyebrows shot up, and Jack chuckled knowingly from his bed. "Told ya. Hates being jetlagged."

Saito took a deep, calm breath, and finished off the cup. "Thank you," he added, slightly more politely, when he was done.

"No problem," MacGyver told him graciously, and went back to the sink to refill the cup. "You slept through breakfast and lunch, but I can go grab you something if you're up for it."

He considered that for a little while, and from the other side of the room, Jack snorted. "Yeah, better get him somethin' before he gets hangry to go with his jetlag."

Saito closed his eyes. "Remind me again why I thought it would be a good idea to save your life?"

"Sake," Jack volunteered immediately.

Right. The afterparty. Saito opened his eyes again, and gave the other agent a dirty look that Jack couldn't see. "This party sucks."

Jack hmmed. " . . . it kinda does," he agreed after a minute. "Mac, do you think you can rustle up some-"

"Nope," MacGyver replied, without a trace of hesitation. "Alcohol and the four different painkillers you are currently on do not play well with each other – actually, they play a little _too_ well with each other, they cause your central nervous system to release an excess of neurotransmitters related to depressing your-"

"You're depressing me," Jack cut him off. "Fine, no sake or bourbon. Beer?"

The smirk came back full force. "I'd have to go to 'a bottle-o,'" he pointed out, in a nearly flawless Australian accent. Weirdly, it made Jack wince, and he – very slowly – reached up a bandaged right hand to adjust his ice bag.

"Dude, just stop, you know how I feel about that-"

"Right, dude, totally." He slipped into an impeccable Californian surfer accent, and Jack groaned again. It made Saito smile.

"A sandwich, really anything's fine." Saito made a halfhearted gesture toward Dalton's bed. "I'll make sure he stays put."

"It's harder than it sounds," MacGyver warned him, but he did cross back over to his chair, pulling a jacket off the back and hunting around in an interior pocket for his wallet. "I can't bring you back an actual beer, Jack, but do you want a root beer? They've got the good stuff here. Bundaberg."

Jack made a noncommittal noise. MacGyver smirked again, then pocketed his wallet and gave Saito another nod before he let himself out of the room, closing the door firmly behind him.

For a long moment, there was blissful quiet, and Saito stretched his aching body and seriously considered taking a catnap.

"Si." Gone was the teasing tone – this was low and gravel and serious. "Give it to me straight."

Saito raised his arms over his head, stretching them before folding them over the top of the pillow. "Give you what?"

Jack shifted a little. "Mac won't tell me squat. How bad was it?"

Saito tried to parse that out. "The op? We called in my old captain. Far as I know they cleaned it up. Don't know about civilian losses. I crapped out on the flight, woke up here, same as you."

"I don't mean the op. But that's good," Jack hastened to add. "Did I . . . did I talk?"

He shrugged, more to stretch his back than because he thought Jack would know. "No idea. If you did, it wasn't much. Didn't warn them about us, at any rate. You don't remember?"

Jack growled. "More than I'd like, less than I should," he finally admitted shortly.

Probably all he remembered was the pain. Saito had come back around when they'd unloaded him from the bird, and stayed that way until about ten pm. Long enough for Dalton to get in and out of minor surgery. Most of what they'd done for him was wound treatment. He'd been right about the horsewhipping – it being a horse trailer and all – and the knife play. Also true to form, the men on the ground hadn't done anything too permanent. Four broken fingers, all on his left hand, two more dislocated on his right. Several bones in his left hand broken as well, along with a few fractures in his left wrist. He'd been working diligently on a collapsed lung in the back of the beater pickup truck, but it was something the paramedics had managed to fix on the ground. His face was one giant bruise, as was most of his exposed skin, but it was just a beating.

No missing digits, no missing organs. Not even any missing toenails. All in all Dalton had dodged a bullet. Saito wasn't quite sure Jack really understood what had been about to happen to him when MacGyver had foolishly gotten himself caught and caused those interrogators just enough of a distraction.

"Did I scare him?"

"MacGyver?" Saito's eyebrows drew together as he thought. "Not really. Dude just kinda rolls with things."

At that, Jack gave a slow chuckle. "Yeah, that's a nice way of putting it."

Now it was Saito's turn to smirk. "He's an acquired taste, your partner."

"He's a damn puppy, Si."

"Not the word I'd use."

"Oh?" There was a tiny little note of warning in his tone, and Saito reconsidered.

Nope. Not a puppy. "Arrogant. Reckless. Disobedient. Curious," he added, after a moment. "Generous. Intelligent. Stubborn. Resourceful. But not a puppy. He's older than he should be."

A guy as young as Angus MacGyver had no business wearing the face he'd been wearing in the back of that pickup truck. No one his age should look that battleworn. Should have any context for that kind of pain.

"And what the fuck is his problem with guns? Did you shoot him or something?"

Jack sighed, then reached up – again, very stiffly – and adjusted the ice pack a little further up his face. Saito listened to the water slosh. "Doesn't like 'em," Jack said simply. "I really ain't sure, to tell you the truth. He's been that way all the years I've known him."

Saito tucked that away. "But you don't deny shooting him."

"Don't think I haven't thought about it. More than once," Jack muttered. "That guy's given me just about every grey hair I got. You're not wrong, that reckless part?" He chuckled humorlessly. "You only spent a couple days with him, so you just trust me when I tell ya, Si, you ain't got the first clue."

Saito wondered idly exactly what MacGyver had told his partner. He'd been depressingly forthcoming about Saito's bite – at least three doctors had 'consulted' on his left calf and were thoroughly impressed he was alive – but despite his arrogance, he didn't seem boastful or brash. He just thought he knew better than everyone around him.

And, in at least three instances, he'd been right about that.

"When he sprinted after your follow car I figured he was just feeling guilty. The really stupid shit happened a couple days after, when he decided to ditch me and go on a one man rescue mission."

This information didn't seem to surprise Dalton at all. "And he gave you a bunch of baloney about it being logical and reasonable, with odds and probability bullshit?"

"Oh yeah."

"Heh." The men were quiet a moment. "I tell you what, he scares the shit outta me sometimes, Si. Dude is _so_ freakin' smart. Smartest damn guy I've ever met. And then he'll turn around and pull the dumbest shit imaginable. Sometimes I honestly wonder if he's got, like, nine lives or somethin'."

"That's a cat, Dalton, not a dog."

"Whatever, doesn't matter. I've seen him get himself in and outta situations that no one else coulda. He's a damn magician."

Dalton wasn't wrong about that. "I'll drink to that."

Jack grunted. ". . . he's kinda a stickler about mixing meds and alcohol, though. He's a weird dude. Weird," Jack repeated, in obvious honest confusion, and Saito hid a grin. Whatever pain meds they had Dalton on, he _definitely_ did not need to add any alcohol. Maybe the interrogators' drugs were still having an effect.

"So, you dug him up in the sandbox?"

"I did," Jack confirmed. "Was assigned to him sixty-four days before end of tour. Re-upped just to make sure he didn't get his fool head blown off."

Considering Saito had gone from barely able to tolerate MacGyver to actively worried about his well-being in the span of a couple days, he could relate. Almost like Jack was reading his thoughts, he continued.

"Mac didn't say much, just that you got bit by a pretty nasty li'l viper and shoulda been laid up . . . but he said you called him 'brother'."

MacGyver probably didn't understand the significance, but Jack did, and Saito found himself smiling.

"Yes," he confirmed. "That's what I call the men who save my life. _Little_ brother, in his case," he stressed. "Only reason that bakayarou is still alive."

"Oh, yeah, I hear ya."

"I mean it, Dalton. I wanted to rip his head off. If he'd just picked up the damn gun, we could have avoided all of this –"

"-but his cover was already blown," a voice pointed out, fairly reasonably, from the barely cracked-open door, and Saito glared at it until it fully opened, revealing MacGyver, carrying a plastic shopping bag. "They would have scattered, we wouldn't have found the base of operations without another op, and this time they'd be ready for it-"

"-and then he tries to defend himself, like the baseball isn't his, and the window just broke itself," Saito continued, as if MacGyver hadn't spoken.

"Yeah, that's true," Jack drawled, and MacGyver's slightly exasperated look transferred to him. "He doesn't listen worth a damn –"

"Heads straight for the deep end of the pool . . ."

"Gets away with shit I could _never_ get away with . . ."

"Small enough to wear hand-me-downs . . ."

MacGyver's eyebrows, which had been climbing, relaxed into a long-suffering look, and he just pulled his wallet out of his back pocket, dropped it on Jack's bedside table, and sat, setting the bag down beside him. "You two just let me know when you're done."

"Oh, we're just gettin' started, dawg," Jack assured him. "You constantly borrow and then break my shit . . ."

"Total little bro move," Saito agreed immediately. "He actually took my car apart."

"Sounds like him," Jack replied. "No respect for other people's stuff."

"And strangers seem to think it's charming when he misbehaves. Like a toddler."

MacGyver cleared his throat, then reached into the bag and withdrew a root beer. He didn't say a word, he just cracked it open and took a swig.

"And now I think he's drinking your root beer," Saito added. "Another classic."

"Maybe it's yours," MacGyver pointed out, after he'd taken a long draught. "Doesn't look like you're about to come over here and get it."

Jack started laughing. "Yeah, you gotta watch 'im, he'll hit back."

Saito looked at his left leg consideringly. His odds of running down MacGyver weren't great even without the bum leg – the guy could really haul ass. With crutches, it wasn't going to happen. Then he did a quick sweep of the room, noticing that there were no crutches in sight. He narrowed his eyes as they fell on MacGyver, who innocently took another sip of root beer.

"You already turned my crutches into a trebuchet, didn't you."

The blond agent swallowed and shook his head. "No, they're in the closet, but that's not a bad idea –"

"Don't, Si, nuh-uh," Jack interrupted flatly. "Don't feed the Mac. Next thing you know he'll have jet rockets mounted on the back of your wheelchair."

MacGyver raised an eyebrow at his partner. "Open flame's not a great idea in a hospital, Jack. Too much canned O2." He reached over and flicked the nasal cannula on Jack's face for emphasis, causing the other man to wince a little, then wince more at the pain the first wince had caused. Saito couldn't help but chuckle.

Yeah. Little brother worked just fine. You wanted to fucking kill the annoying little shit, but you just couldn't, because there wasn't a mean bone in his body, and you knew he'd do anything for you.

Even go up against an entire drug cartel armed with nothing but a swiss army knife.

And you knew that he could actually do it.

"But compressed gas propulsion would work pretty well," MacGyver continued, and set down the root beer, warming to his lecture. "You could mount the cannisters and the valves on the sides, then all you'd need to do is –"

"He doesn't have an off switch," Jack interrupted apologetically. "I been looking for years."

Saito was about to reply when a plastic-wrapped sandwich came sailing towards him, and he caught it easily. MacGyver gave him a moment to recover before he underhanded a bottle of root beer over, much more gently. Saito still gave it a little time to settle, unwrapping the sandwich, and Jack finally dragged the blue ice bag off his face, which looked significantly worse than it had yesterday. Saito knew what he was looking for, now, and he caught MacGyver's subtle flinch.

The way that MacGyver had held onto Jack's wrist, very casually monitoring his vitals the entire time they waited for exfil. The sunburn he'd gotten by giving Jack his shirt, making a visor so Jack wouldn't get that same burn on his already lacerated face.

Jack was right after all. He _had_ scared his partner.

Dalton didn't seem to notice it, or if he did, he didn't acknowledge it. "You didn't get me one?"

MacGyver maintained his innocent look. "You can have the rest of this one, if you want it . . . "

The two men stared at each other a moment, then MacGyver relented, and fished a third root beer out of the bag.

Saito hid a smile when Mac opened it without asking, then actually half-stood so he could press it securely into his partner's bandaged right hand. It didn't seem to slow the man down as he raised the bottle to his lips. Saito glanced again at MacGyver as Dalton swallowed painfully, and discovered that his study of the young man had been detected, and MacGyver was looking right at him.

Saito gave him a droll look. "Pretty sure he can be three quarters dead and still drink a beer." Root or otherwise.

MacGyver's expression was a little more inscrutable. "Did you guys meet at a kegger or something . . . ? Clearly copious amounts of alcohol were involved."

Saito transferred to look to Jack, who was watching him out of the corner of his swollen right eye. "Asking for dirt on you. Classic kid brother."

"Aww, you can tell 'im, Si. I tell him everything."

MacGyver fixed his partner with an incredulous look. "Since when –"

"Everything but the stuff that's classified –"

MacGyver scoffed. "We have the same clearance, Jack."

Jack turned and gave Saito a conspiratory look. "Sure, in the States . . ."

Saito couldn't help it. He laughed. "I think I'll keep that one close to the vest a while. Future blackmail opportunity." While the joking around was fun, there were more serious questions at hand. "And speaking of, either of you got dirt on the director? I got a feeling I just blew my probationary period."

Both men responded to the change in atmosphere by leaning back, almost in tandem. Jack was the first to speak. "Don't worry about that, Si. Patty's been in the field before. She knows what it's like in the shit."

Saito felt his eyebrows rise. "Patty?"

Jack gave him a lopsided grin. "Oh yeah, her and me are totally on a first name basis." Behind him, MacGyver was making very clear 'abort' gestures by waving his fingers across his throat. Apparently oblivious, Dalton continued. "Y'see, the trick with Patty is just to set that more casual, personable atmosphere, y'know, show her the water's jus' fine –"

"Before she forces your head under it and holds it there," MacGyver finished. "But he's not wrong, the director is one of the best field agents there is. I wouldn't worry about your place with DXS. Just . . ." He took a sip of his root beer. "Don't make a habit of it. Unless you _really_ like paperwork."

Saito gave a half-laugh. "Speaking from experience?"

"You could say that," Mac admitted around the mouth of the bottle. "Or it could be because my partner insists on being intentionally disrespectful . . ."

Dalton scoffed. "As if I would ever disrespect a beautiful woman."

MacGyver gave Saito a look that clearly said 'Exhibit A,' and he couldn't help laughing a little himself. "So the rest of the op went well? Why so many in hospital?"

The younger agent set his root beer down again, all business. "We were right about the mistreatment of the aborigines. Dozens were brought here for observation. Dehydration and heat exhaustion mostly. Your Special Assault team was extremely thorough, by the way. It looks like we scooped up the entire operation here, and most of the tech in the trailers was still intact. DXS has sent in some technicians to comb through the evidence, and we expect to identify at least the first line of the operations in both Afghanistan and Japan."

"Good," Saito replied, and he meant it. "What about our friends Tak and Jim-ba? I trust the joyriding didn't land them in hot water with the local authorities?" That wasn't really what he was asking, and MacGyver picked up on that, because a tiny smile seemed to settle on his lips before he cleared his throat.

"No, they managed to evade the local authorities. I've already put a request in with the director to formally recognize all the indigenous peoples who were integral in the isolation and eradication of the drug operations. She's assured me the request has been passed to the highest levels of the Australian government."

Saito hadn't been with DXS for long, but he got the feeling that meant a direct phone call to the Australian Prime Minister. Based on the way Mac had said it, so seriously, he was also quite sure it was going to happen. There was little doubt the drug ring was able to press local tribes into slavery due to their recalcitrance to report their woes to the local police, who often were less than sympathetic, and in this case owned by the cartel. Saito figured a shake-up of law enforcement for the entire territory was Step Two.

And it should have been. The way Tak and Jim-ba had been treated just in the clinic's reception area . . . for all the Australians seemed so laid back, the overt racism was as disappointing as it was perplexing.

"You should probably leave them that Land Rover, too," Saito suggested mildly. "Pretty sure the warranty's voided."

The small smile grew into a medium-sized, if self-deprecating, one. "What makes you think I don't have a Jaguar mechanic's license?"

"The way you disemboweled it without a moment's hesitation."

Jack had been watching him, but now his gaze turned to his partner. "You trashed another car? Dude, we've _talked_ about this –"

Mac had recovered his root beer, and gestured to his partner with it. "I put it back together! I mean, okay, a few of the coolant hoses are probably stretched beyond spec but they held –" And the younger agent then looked at him for support. "- right?"

And the answer was yes. The hoses had been stretched beyond specifications. They had been used to help a human being breathe. Used to funnel drugs into a person who would have died without them. No matter how bad he felt, lying in that bed, he was alive because a young American wouldn't accept anything less. And because of what MacGyver had done, his partner was alive. More than alive. A potentially lethal drug ring had been snuffed out in infancy. Dozens of lives had been saved, lives that weren't important to the government, weren't important even to their own country. But were important to one lowly young agent who wasn't about to let them be lost in vain.

Saito inclined his head. "They did. I had my doubts . . . but they got the job done."

MacGyver grinned as if he understood the compliment he'd just received, and nudged his partner. "See? It's fine. I really can fix that sluggish acceleration issue with your Shelby-"

"You are not _touching_ my baby-"

He listened to the two bicker, and opened his own root beer – cautiously. It had settled from the toss, and MacGyver had been right. It was delicious. A little ginger in there gave it a surprise kick, and Saito relaxed back into the mattress and took another sip.

It was an acquired taste. But it grew on you.

Fast.

-M-

**FIN**

-M-

This story – Saito meeting Mac for the first time - was a one-liner I threw into the original Turkey Day, a point Samantha was making to Riley regarding why all the agents in the villa in Greece were risking their lives to find and extract Jack and MacGyver from their situation. The line was "Saito is alive and breathing because Mac was able to make taipan antivenin out of a Land Rover in the middle of the Australian outback." I figured that sounded like something Mac could do. Totally.

Then **Alyssa Blackbourn** asked me to write it for her as a Christmas present. And I had to actually figure out how to do that. (I'll give you a hint – I totally made it up. Please do not drain transmission and brake fluid from a Land Rover, boil them, titrate them, add rat enzymes, and inject them into your friend. Pretty sure that friend will die.) She also wanted the three of them being cute, and there had to be a kitten involved.

You may have noticed a lot of similarities between Saito's situation in this, and Mac's in Just Desserts. Unfortunately, there wasn't much I could do about that. It turns out you stop breathing when an inland taipan bites you, so they both ended up intubated, which is why Saito made the comment that he knows how Mac feels in the hospital in Amsterdam. It should be noted, these feral kittens inspired a therapy kitten to be added to Just Desserts, and then you all know how Professor Minerva 'Mina' McGonagall came to be in the MacGyver residence. This should also give context to Jack's 'snake surprise' conversation in Just Desserts.


	8. Decaf Coffee

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue. For those of you who recognize a few certain someones, they were originally referenced in **Ground Rules,** and are being used with permission.

 **Apology:** I've attempted to keep my little stories as close as possible to (my admittedly limited knowledge of) real military tactics, language, and situations. This one is in the same spirit as the others – it's not accurate, and I'm still waiting to get schooled by all you veterans out there.

 **LZ** – Landing Zone. **SWAG** – Scientific Wild-Ass Guess. **CASEVAC** – Casualty Evacuation. **TOC** \- Tactical Operations Center. **FOB** – Forward Operating Base. **DFAC** – Dining Facilities. **AO** – Area of Operation. **Crunchie** s – basic infantry. **Turtle Fucking** – banging someone's helmet with your own to make a loud noise. **Triple Threat** – Anyone with a Special Forces, Ranger School, and Airborne Tab on their uniform. **Un-Ass** – to move one's butt out of an area. **TROBA** – abort spelled backwards; a wish that an unlikely abort will be issued for a current operation.

-M-

**AFGHANISTAN – SHARAN, PAKTIKA PROVINCE**

"We good?"

There was a tense silence, broken only by sporadic gunfire outside, and Specialist MacGyver finally looked up from his pad to find the other seven men were staring right at him.

But it was Charlie Robinson who spoke next. "I said, are we good?"

The EOD technician wasn't the highest ranking soldier in the room. That was their combat engineer, McCartney. His silence bothered Mac the most; if they hadn't gotten him on board, this Hail Mary was going to end before it began.

And McCartney clearly knew it, because after another pregnant pause, he pressed his lips together, then spoke.

"Your overwatch, Molina - he confirmed the quick reaction force is inbound?"

Robinson gave a firm nod. "Yessir. Squad of Army Rangers, Javier knows them personally. ETA ten minutes."

Another pause, before McCartney turned to his right. "And you're sure you've got enough ammo to keep the LZ clear?"

The three infantrymen there glanced at each other, and each gave a tentative nod. "We'll make it work, sir."

"That's not what I asked, private."

"Yessir." It was Timmons who answered, much more strongly this time. "We'll get 'em safe on the ground, sir."

The engineer gave the three men another hard look, then his eyes flicked without blinking straight to Mac's. "And you, you're one hundred percent that you can somehow get that pile of shit hummer up and running in less than three minutes?"

Mac didn't even have to think about it. "Yessir. She only needs half her horses to run the winch." He had the math, the angles, even the tensile strength of the cable, and he knew McCartney well enough to know the engineer could follow along with the formulas. The numbers were good.

The state of the blast-damaged humvee, now, that was a SWAG, and the best he could do from the two minutes he'd been hunkered down behind her avoiding bullets.

If the humvee was too damaged to run the winch, or the winch mechanism itself was damaged, there was no way they could move that concrete. He'd already considered and then scrapped the idea of using the helo to lift it off – they didn't have enough cable, they didn't have a quick way to secure said non-existent cable, and they didn't have the firepower necessary to protect the helo, even with a handful of Army Rangers coming in to bolster their numbers. Any smokescreen they laid down would get dissipated in the helo's wash.

If the winch didn't work, there was no getting Jack out of that rubble. Not with the time and the resources they had.

Therefore the winch was going to work.

"And you two dumb shits-" and his dark eyes shifted temporarily to Charlie Robinson, "-are fully aware that you're gonna be literally silhouetted sniper bait on the top of that pile?" He gestured at the blown-out window. "Because that debris cloud is good and gone, gentlemen, and the helo's gonna blow off what hasn't settled yet."

Mac didn't even need to glance out the window to know that he was right, the debris cloud from the collapsed building was more than half dispersed by now. The dust would give them zero cover. Robinson's overwatch and the ready reaction force would be the only protection they had.

In his peripheral vision, he saw Charlie glance his way, but Mac didn't take his eyes off McCartney. "Yessir."

"And if any one piece of this plan goes to hell, every last one of us is to immediately fall back to the rally point. Including you, specialist." It wasn't a question.

It was an order.

Mac gave an immediate nod, and lied to a commanding officer for the second time that day. "Yessir." As soon as he had Jack free and clear of the debris, he would absolutely fall back to the rally point.

McCartney seemed to sense there was more to his answer, because his eyes never left Mac's. "Milo, you hang back in good cover and be ready to receive. CASEVAC still half an hour out?"

Their medic and radio operator took his time replying – there was apparently plenty of chatter on the main frequency for him to keep tabs on. "Yessir. The rest of our element is pinned down good and tight north of our position, so evac'll be to the west. We got enough grunts to carry 'im."

McCartney finally released Mac to glare at his comms officer. "We get orders to go bail 'em out?"

Milo gave a quick head shake. "No sir. Got two more callsigns on the main frequency, don't recognize either but they're coming in from another op to provide backup. We're to hold at the main rally point until those Rangers sound the all clear."

Mac quietly filed that information away. If they truly couldn't get Jack out of the rubble on the first try, it could be hours until the Army Rangers had beaten back the insurgents. And hours after that before the earthmoving equipment they would need could get here. If the winch failed –

He'd need another vehicle, and he'd need Charlie and Javier to convince those Army Rangers to let him back into the AO.

McCartney also considered the information, then focused back on Charlie. "You said ten minutes. You stand by that estimate?"

"Yessir," Robinson replied without hesitation, and Mac felt a rush of gratitude to his fellow EOD. He hadn't even had to say anything – Charlie had been on board from the second the building collapsed, and he knew damn well what he was risking.

"And your overwatch is still secure?"

"Yessir. Javier's ready and waiting."

McCartney lapsed back into silence for a moment. "And Dalton, he's still with us?"

In answer, Mac reached up and keyed his radio. "Hey, buddy, we're almost finished with the prep work. You ready to get outta there?"

For a long second, there was only quiet static in Mac's ear. "-as'a'lever'be."

Mac gave a solemn nod to the room. No need to mention the slurring was getting worse. Hypoxia, concussion, blood loss – maybe all three. He wasn't sure what they were going to find under that building, which was why they needed to go _now_.

The staff sergeant then exchanged a look with the only other combat engineer in the small room. "We're absolutely sure we got no one else in that rubble, no other men or civilians?"

The other engineer nodded as well. "Evacuated with the rest of the civilians. We've got no reason to believe anyone else was in there when it went down."

It was the only saving grace in an otherwise dire situation. This part of Sharan had been evacuated, and Jack would have cleared the building before he took his position. Of all of the variables, that was one Mac was one hundred percent sure about.

"Corporal, you're the one running the winch. It'll be your call."

Unaware that negotiations for his life were underway, Jack continued talking in Mac's ear, his voice growing more gravelly with every word. ". . . hey . . . if'it . . . don'work . . . tha'dain'on'yuh . . . still'shooten . . . I c'n'ear'em . . . y' . . . y'jus'get'clear . . ."

Corporal Perugu glanced their way again, and Mac simply handed him his scratchpad. The math was good. The plan was good. As long as the winch held, they were good. In and out before the enemy even realized they were there.

Jack eventually stopped transmitting, and Mac wasn't willing to let his cover hang. He put his back to the room, facing the sand and mud wall, and dropped his voice, hoping the throat mic would compensate. "Nope," Mac replied quietly, putting as much cavalier steel in his voice as he could. "Today's not that day, pal. Not today."

Not today.

-M-

**FOUR HOURS EARLIER**

Something was wrong.

MacGyver waited until the FOB was no longer in line of sight and the convoy had made it to the road proper. Waited for them to gain some speed and settle into a steady formation. Usually that was when Dalton relaxed a little behind the wheel and shifted into what he called his 'cruising mode'.

This time it didn't happen. His eyes were still all over the place, scanning for threats, and the set of his shoulders remained tense.

Mac casually loosened his collar and cleared his throat, pitching his voice low.

"Son," he drawled, in his best Texas accent, "you're off your feed. Somethin' eatin' ya?"

His overwatch finally reacted to his presence – by throwing him a distracted frown. "Really? That's really how you think Texans sound?"

Mac let his careful jaw placement melt into a smirk. "Pretty much. Seriously, though, what's up?"

The frown didn't go anywhere – and neither did Jack's left hand, which was toying with his dog tags. He'd pulled them to the outside of his jacket, which was weird enough, and he couldn't quite seem to leave them alone. "Nothin'."

He said it so dismissively, so passively, that under other circumstances, Mac would have left him alone. Normal Jack – if any aspect of Jack Dalton could be considered _normal_ – would be to growl something like that. Dare you to keep picking until you got what was coming to you. Which was usually some form of physical altercation that, if you were lucky, ended with chuckling and half-hearted expletives.

And not that Mac typically picked. Throwing stones in glass houses and all that. His cover had gotten good at reading him, especially after their helo had been shot down over a supposedly uninhabited mountain range north-east of Kabul. Dalton knew when to push, and when to back the hell off.

MacGyver had no such frame of reference. This was brand new territory. In two hundred and forty-seven days, he'd never once heard Dalton use that tone of voice. In fact, he'd never once had to put in more than two syllables of effort to get Jack Dalton to speak, about virtually any topic. Talking was not a thing the sniper eschewed, not unless there was a need for noise or radio discipline. And even then it wasn't _that_ hard to get him to ignore even those requirements.

This was a first. And he had no idea what had precipitated it.

So Mac did what he always did when he had a puzzle in front of him.

"Well, it's definitely not _nothing_ ," he started, in what he hoped was a reasonable tone despite the double negative. "You didn't sleep last night. You skipped breakfast – pancakes, by the way, with real butter – and you haven't taken your hand off your tags since we got in the 'vee. After you polished them instead of hitting the DFAC with me."

Dalton's left hand dropped from the dog tags like they'd flash-burned him, and the distracted frown deepened. His sunglasses made it hard to decipher any deeper expression. "Now how in the hell would you know if I slept? Our damn barracks sound like a lumber mill."

"True," Mac agreed, re-securing his collar against the chill. "But when you swing your legs over the side, you shift the sleeping plane of my bunk about seven degrees. Which is really annoying, by the way." He didn't see a need to further add that it had remained tilted seven degrees, meaning Jack hadn't just gotten up – he'd sat up and stayed that way. And he hadn't taken advantage of his bunk-mounted light, as some of the guys did when they couldn't sleep and resorted to reading or writing reports.

Jack had just sat there, on the edge of his bunk, staring at the cold, darkened barracks. For hours.

Then again, he was a sniper, and sitting still watching hard to see things for hours on end was sort of his job description. Mac had a few pretty unlikely relaxation techniques himself. Alone, it was hardly a compelling case.

Dalton seemed to agree, because he snorted. "Think you were dreamin' again, hoss."

"Well, I didn't dream you skipping breakfast, or polishing up your tags. What, you don't think you're gonna suddenly need them, do you?" The last he said in a teasing voice. "Were _you_ dreaming last night?"

The only indication he'd hit a sore spot – that Dalton frequently dreamt about missions going wrong and dying in increasingly gruesome and improbable ways - was a grunt. "Think y'got that ginormous brain of yours twisted, there. Weren't you just insisting I didn't sleep?"

Fair point. But something definitely had him – what was that verb he loved so much – right. _Spooked_. Jack Dalton looked spooked. And maybe that was exactly what was bothering him.

"You're not about to head out for one of those covert missions, are you?" Mac kept his voice light, a simple inquiry and nothing more, and for the first time that morning, he got Jack's full and undivided attention.

"What - no," he said it so fast that the words blended together. "I told you, I signed on for another tour on the condition I was paired with you. I ain't goin' nowhere, and before you get started on me, I don't regret signing back up for one second. Not one," he insisted, knife hand back in Mac's face. "And I ain't regrettin' it now. Not exactly, anyway," he added, a little uncertainly, and Mac felt his eyebrows furrow at the odd turn of the conversation.

"Not . . . exactly," he echoed, and Dalton presumably put his eyes back on the road – and his hand back on the wheel.

"It's just . . . this mission, today . . ." Dalton shook his head.

Mac visualized the sheet of paper with their orders from earlier that morning, focusing his mental eyes on the upper left-hand corner.

January 8th.

Barely a week after the Christmas and New Year holidays, and with an ambient temperature of about thirty-six degrees Fahrenheit, even if it didn't look like January in Afghanistan, it definitely felt like it. Mac racked his brain for a reason that January 8th might have meaning, some historically important event. "The first day of the Watergate trial?"

Behind the wheel, Jack fell still. "Dude. Is there, like, an encyclopedia written on the inside of your sunglasses or somethin'?"

Mac relaxed a little. This was more like their normal banter, and perhaps an indication that his technique was working. "No, but the military's been looking into using optical HUD technology on one way glass f-"

"Watergate was before your time, Carl's Junior," Jack interrupted him flatly. "You weren't even a-" He broke off suddenly, and Mac waited for him to fish the correct colloquialism out of the sea of completely inappropriate one-liners and puns that was a Dalton brain.

". . . a sparkle in my father's eye?" Mac finally offered, when it was clear it wasn't going to be forthcoming.

Jack gave the road a tight smile. "Say, you never mention him. Your father," he clarified. "Not to be nosy, but your folks didn't send you so much as a Christmas card that I saw."

Mac smirked and made a show of getting comfortable in his seat harness. "Oh no, slick. We're talkin' about you right now," he drawled, repeating verbatim something Jack had said to him many times before.

That got a half-hearted chuckle out of his cover, and Jack uncharacteristically cleared his throat. "It's just . . . this time of year. Well, today, really," he admitted, and then he smiled, almost like he was embarrassed. "Today's the anniversary of when – when my pop passed on."

Mac was utterly unprepared for that piece of ordinance to be dropped in his lap, and for several seconds he didn't know what to say. "Jack, I'm so sorry. Why didn't you say something earlier?"

But the older man was already waving him off, his voice ever so slightly husky. "It's been a little while - five years to the day. Date kinda sneaks up on me, I don't go lookin' for it, just find myself thinkin' 'bout him around this time."

Sitting on the edge of his bunk, in the dark. Polishing up his dog tags.

A fragment of a conversation they'd had, long before they were truly on friendly terms, bubbled up to the front of MacGyver's mind. "Your dad was military, wasn't he?"

The slightly tremulous smile grew just a little more natural-looking. "He flew pararescue, savin' downed pilots. Carried out over a hundred missions, all over the world. God, he had the best stories." Jack laughed softly. "You know, he told me – he said that one of his proudest days was the day I made Delta."

Mac nodded. "He teach you to fly?"

"Planes, yeah. Plenty'a work for crop dusters an' mail delivery in Texas. And sky divers, if you can believe that." He chuckled at the memory. "I actually got a chance to take him up in a whirly-bird, a few years after I got my license. The look on his face . . . never did trust 'em. He'd say, gimme two fixed wings an' I'll get ya where you're goin', but there ain't no sense flyin' around in a ceilin' fan."

Dalton Senior certainly had a point, but Mac wisely refrained from vocalizing it. "Sounds like you two had something special."

"We did. We really did." Jack's voice sounded both wistful and wondering, and then he laughed again, and swallowed. Mac was eighty-seven percent sure his cover was winning the fight with his emotions. "Pops was a great man. If I end up half the man he was, I'll die happy. Truly happy, you know?"

"Yeah," Mac agreed readily, and then the cabin of the humvee settled back into quiet. "Those are your dad's tags, aren't they."

Dalton gave another slow nod, and picked them back up in his left hand. "Pop left 'em to me, said they'd done him right, got him home safe, an' he hoped they'd do the same for me."

MacGyver had figured out his cover was a superstitious man within the first hundred days they'd served together. Since that time, they had discussed – at length – the topics of werewolves, vampires, chupacabra, zombies, ghosts, angels, and only a few weeks ago, the Krampus. Which Jack was more willing to believe in than Santa Claus, which made absolutely no logical sense.

But this, the physical metal tags hanging on the outside of Dalton's jacket, those made far more sense to Mac than a lucky rabbit's foot or a crucifix. The dog tags of a man who served represented taking action, not luck or favor. A real, tangible human being to look up to, to respect, to learn from.

"Yeah, man," Mac agreed readily. "I'm sure they will. And hey, look, whatever the situation in Sharan, we'll get through it."

Jack nodded, but it was the automatic variety that meant he wasn't actually listening. "Yeah, dude, I ain't takin' my eyes offa you today. Not even for a _second_. An' if this is the same deal as that Day of a Thousand IEDs, you do me a solid, and you don't do anything stupid without me, you hear me?"

"Five by five," Mac confirmed, putting his focus back on the road and the convoy in front of them. "Saving the stupid for you."

The cab fell back into quiet for a moment – about as quiet as a fully armored humvee cab could get – before his cover caught on, and even in his peripheral vision Mac could see the glare he was getting. He wasn't quite able to keep the smirk off his face.

-M-

**PRESENT TIME**

Mac threw his back against the short garden wall, keeping his head bowed low enough that the curve of his helmet wouldn't be visible. He waited two breaths, but no one fired – at least not closely enough that he thought they were firing at _him_ – and then he waved Robinson and Perugu forward.

"-yu'godda . . . godda geddow . . ." Jack's voice was weak, even with the volume cranked up, and Mac winced, only partly out of physical discomfort.

"Relax, buddy, we're already here," he replied as soon as he heard the click that told him Jack was off the channel. "You just sit tight. Slow, deep breaths, okay?"

Robinson landed against the wall, hard, on Mac's right, and Corporal Perugu on the left. Both had their rifles up and ready, but if it all went according to plan, they'd never have to fire a shot. Charlie watched Mac take his hand off his radio, and he indicated it with a sharp jerk of his head.

"Dalton still talkin'?"

Mac nodded wordlessly, daring to crane his neck and peer over the wall. They were at the last residence before the street turned commercial, and the humvee closest to the collapsed building was only thirty yards out. Two storefronts, and they were there.

"Okay, looks like we got a clear path to the humvee. I'm gonna . . . I like the look of that one on the left, maybe an old hardware store." He couldn't read the sign, but he was pretty sure he'd seen some cookware in there, and there might be a few odds and ends that could come in handy if the humvee became problematic.

"MacGyver, wait." It was the engineer, eyeing the mountain of debris that was overshadowing the end of the street. "I thought you said this thing collapsed from the bottom up."

Mac stomped on his impatience as Jack continued mumbling in his ear. "It did."

Perugu frowned, then gestured. "And the blast was centered on the north-west fail point, first floor?"

"Yeah," Charlie confirmed, before Mac could.

"Then it didn't come straight down. The second floor came down at an angle, north end first, and then cracked and slipped." He used his hands to demonstrate. "Then the third came down on that partially cracked second and slipped further. Then the fourth after that. That shaft they built straight up the middle? That would have exacerbated the slide." He angled his right hand on top of his left, showing the degree, and Mac swore, loudly, and popped up again.

The debris cloud was still present in the hazy air, but it had cleared significantly in the past twenty minutes. The street no longer resembled Sharan at dusk. Sunlight was filtering through, and even though the collapsed building was almost fifty yards out, Mac could finally actually _see_ what had become of it, and his stomach dropped when it became empirically clear to him that the engineer was right.

The building had buckled exactly where Mac said it had, but the brittle concrete had slipped to the north side, one slab after another. The second and third floors had cracked to pieces, but the fourth floor – the floor Jack had been positioned on – and the roof, they had been partially buffered by the way the floors below had shattered.

That cushioning had probably saved Jack's life. But it had also spared the fourth floor – and more importantly, the roof – from the hard impacts necessary to crack the solid concrete structure into reasonably sized pieces.

The roof was still mostly intact. Meaning he was potentially having to pull off a much larger slab of concrete than he'd calculated. It also changed where Jack would have ended up in the debris pile.

"Okay." It was Charlie, and his smooth, calm voice seemed to resonate in Mac's half-inflated lungs. "That doesn't change the fact that we know Jack's still near the top. We know the void he's in is at least . . . sixteen cubic feet, or it's cracked enough to allow gas exchange, otherwise he'd be – he'd be unconscious by now." Robinson's voice barely caught. "All we have to do is break up the concrete ourselves. The plan was to use a plug of C4 and a little det cord to make a hole for the cable anyway. We'll just make a couple more holes, another couple plugs of C4, blow 'em together, and we're back in business. The void will protect Dalton from the worst of the concussion."

Their combat engineer hesitated, and Mac did some quick geometry and mathematical physics. "Charlie's right. That building started out as a single story, solid concrete structure. As future generations amassed wealth, they added floors one at a time. Each one of those floors, roof included, was poured as a separate slab, wet to dry."

And the order in which the building had been assembled was crucial. Wet concrete didn't bond well to dry, so each floor literally acted as its own, fully isolated structure simply stacked on top of the one below – essentially held there only by its own weight, and the weight of the floor above it. The owners had built that central shaft through it as a nod to the lack of windows, to get more natural light and a small interior courtyard, and that helped them further. It meant the shatter pattern of the concrete was even more predictable.

That shaft had done them another favor, in that to accommodate it, the weight of the entire structure had been balanced on four critical points, and the concrete had been shaped accordingly. Mac knew where it would be the thickest – thus the most brittle – and the most likely stress points to leverage.

Mac knew that because he'd checked it not two hours ago, checked all four points on all four floors for explosives before he'd let Jack take a position there. Knowing that just a few pounds of dynamite in any one of those sixteen places would result in the cloying, suffocating cloud of grey dust that was even now still settling around them.

And there hadn't been any IEDs in the building. There _hadn't_.

Perugu frowned, and cautiously stuck his head above cover again, quickly assessing what he could see. "That shit's thick, you're gonna need more than a couple nuggets of C4."

"Good thing we got a combat engineer with us, then," Charlie concluded, with a tight smile. "Between me and Mac, we got enough boom goo in these packs and then some. While Mac's getting that hummer up and running, you and I will scope out the break points, and then we're right back on schedule."

Charlie Robinson's rank was still technically a specialist, which was also an E-4, making their rank and the corporal's basically equivalent. However, the Army would recognize Perugu as the ranking officer in this scenario, because Specialists were, as the rank implied, specialists in a particular field, and that field was not leadership or tactical response.

Mac liked that Robinson didn't seem to give a shit about that. He'd just issued an order, however politely, and rather than give the combat engineer the option to protest, Mac simply nodded and hopped up over the garden fence, sprinting for the storefront he'd chosen earlier.

He made it without issue, and once again, waited two breaths before he waved the other men on. These breaths were a little more rapid, since it had been a twenty yard dash, and his timing almost got Charlie killed.

MacGyver couldn't even get a bead on where the shooters _were_ , not until the exhaust trail of an RPG indicated the attic of what looked like a textile store further up the street. Mac shot towards the back of the hardware store as soon as he realized what he was looking at, but he was way too late, and when he heard the explosion, it just didn't seem loud enough.

Or hot enough. Or bright enough.

Or hurt enough.

He made it to the other side of the counter he'd been aiming for, listening as small bits of debris rained down, but most of it seemed to be coming from outside, and after a second, the automatic fire petered out. He heard a return volley – so at least one of his companions was up and shooting – and then he heard a single rifle shot that stood out from the others, slightly deeper in timbre.

Sniper fire from Javier Molina, Charlie Robinson's overwatch.

Jack, still buried in the rubble, apparently heard it too. "-ac . . . _Mac_!"

Mac mashed down the transmit button on his radio, even as he crept back towards the front of the store. "Yeah, buddy, still breathing. We're good up here. You okay in there?"

A shadow wearing nearly grey BDUs burst through the missing front door of the hardware store, and Mac tensed, but he immediately recognized Charlie's silhouette. The whites of his eyes were showing, reminding Mac of all the times Bozer, his best friend growing up, had gotten spooked.

Charlie took a knee behind a solid chunk of wall, trying to catch his breath. He didn't seem to be favoring anything, didn't seem to be bleeding. "Shit, Mac –"

MacGyver waited, but the combat engineer didn't magically appear in the doorway. "Perugu . . .?"

In answer, the taller EOD technician gestured back the way they came. "He made it back to the wall. But we got another problem." He was still a little breathless, but his expression was grave, and Mac started to wonder, if neither the garden wall or the hardware store had been the target of that RPG –

Charlie took a deeper breath, and said the words Mac hoped he wouldn't. "They thought we were trying to bug out. The humvee's toast, Mac."

The Taliban had obviously caught sight of the vehicle, and when three American soldiers seemed to be heading right for it, they'd chosen to give away their position in exchange for preventing them from escaping.

"Javier got one, said he's got no angle on the other." More automatic fire, too far out to be Perugu, rattled through the blast-damaged store, and both men instinctively ducked.

"That's the Rangers," Charlie confirmed unnecessarily. "Mac, they're headed our way to cover us, but without the winch –"

Without the winch, even if they could break the concrete Jack was buried beneath, they had no way to pull or shift it off him. Even 'reasonably sized pieces' would be hundreds of pounds. And as soon as either Perugu or the Rangers themselves realized that and called it in, they'd be ordered to retreat to the main rally point.

He had no way to get Jack out of that building. Not in time.

Mac clenched his teeth, scanning his environment for inspiration, and Dalton chose that moment to respond. "'s'uh . . . s'too'hot . . ." There was a dry sound that might have been laughter. "S'south ov'th'border . . ."

"Jack, don't talk, save your air," Mac tried, but Jack was still transmitting, and didn't hear him.

"S'nod . . . nod'yer'faul . . ."

Mac tried again, but Jack was still on the channel. "Dammit, Jack, get off the freq," he growled aloud, and Charlie glanced back at him.

"'Nod'yer'faul . . . s'jus'muh'time . . ."

"He's not going to make it, is he." Charlie couldn't hear Jack, he was tuned in to his and his cover's semi-private channel, just like Mac was tuned to Jack's. It was SOP for small man teams, to keep their chatter off the main operations frequencies. Right now both Mac and Charlie were intentionally using them as an excuse to stay off the main op channels, and while anyone with US Army hardware could have tuned into their broadcasting frequency and been listening in on his conversation with Jack, Mac was pretty sure it was just the two of them.

He opened his mouth to answer Charlie when he heard the telltale click that indicated Jack was no longer transmitting.

Mac didn't miss the opportunity to take over. He needed Jack conscious and responsive, but he also needed Jack to stop talking and conserve what little oxygen he had. "Not yet, big guy. Hey, I ever tell you about the time I set my dad's tool shed on fire?"

Mac released the radio and started inspecting the picked over, half-empty shelves around them, looking for something, anything that might give them the same kind of mechanical advantage as that winch.

As he'd hoped, Jack managed to focus. ". . . y'did . . ?"

Mac tried to put a smirk in his voice, even as he darted around the dim space, cataloguing everything in sight. "Yeah. I was seven, it was a pretty day – I grew up in Mission City, a little town in NorCal, so the summers were really nice. School was out, and I wanted to . . . nerd out, you'd say." He imagined Jack chuckling, but didn't give him a chance to interrupt. "I was mixing some liquids I found to try to get different colors for my sand castle moat – I had a sandbox, for a while, a real one, and I was going through this sand castle phase. That was the day I learned that you could make flames pretty colors too. Not just the boring yellow and blue kinds, but reds, and greens . . ." He was babbling, not paying attention as he hurried to the other side of the store. "And as it turned out, different color flames also burn at different temperatures, so before I knew it my little experiment had kind of gotten out of hand."

He had to release his radio to pull himself up to the top of the shelving unit, elated to find a small motor – only to rotate it and discover it was far too light. A quick inspection found it was missing both pistons.

". . . y'r'pop tan y'r'ide?"

It took him a second to translate. "Eh, my dad wasn't much for spanking. I explained that it was an accident. Sort of." He dropped back down to the ground and turned, giving Charlie, who was still guarding the door, a quick headshake. "Nothing," he admitted, once he'd taken his finger off his radio. "There's nothing in here, not a generator, not a . . ."

It wasn't that he saw it as much as he smelled it, and Mac shut his mouth and sniffed a couple times. He followed his nose to the back corner, where some innocent burlap bags were stacked and half covered with cardboard.

"What do you got, Mac?" Charlie's voice floated from the front of the store.

"Fertilizer," he called back distractedly. He had fertilizer. And diesel. And C4.

When combined, they became literal sacks of explosives.

Perugu's voice echoed in his head, even as Jack muttered in his ear. Mac tuned his cover out on autopilot and focused on the conversation he'd just had with their combat engineer.

Perugu had said the concrete was thick . . . and Jack was in a void of at least sixteen cubic feet . . . and that air would act as a buffer for sound and impact waves . . .

He got back on the radio. "Hey, Jack, are you lying on your back, or your belly?"

Jack wasn't able to follow the sudden topic change. "Naw . . . I's'said . . . whudabout'y'r'mom?"

"Mom wasn't there," Mac said it dismissively. "Jack, focus. Are you lying on your back, or your stomach?"

" . . . uh . . . m'back . . ?" He didn't sound overly sure about it.

He must have rolled and tumbled when the floor buckled. Without light and without much room to squirm around, and as disoriented as he was –

With as disoriented as he was, it didn't matter. There was only one way to get him out before he either ran out of air or bled to death.

Without another second's hesitation, Mac ripped the cardboard aside and grabbed two of the bags of fertilizer. He hurried back to the front of the store. "Charlie, where are those Rangers?"

He knew Javier was in Charlie's ear, and Javier was the comm officer of their pair, just like Jack was his. Javier was keeping tabs on the main chatter and periodically tuning back in to update Charlie.

And true to that assumption, Charlie answered immediately. "Working their way up main street. Perugu reported the RPG – as soon as the Rangers get to us, we're supposed to pull back to the rally point." He cast a quick glance at the two bags slapped down beside him, even as Mac jogged to the back of the store to get the others. "Tell me you're not doing what I think you're doing!"

"We are," he called back, even as he hefted two more bags of the stuff. "Charlie, we can't mechanically move that much concrete, not in time."

It was apparent from the look on his face that Charlie Robinson was on the same page as Mac dropped the last two bags beside him – on the same page and not liking it one bit. "So instead of mechanically moving it – dragging it off him – you want to –"

Mac nodded immediately, dropping to the wall beside Robinson and sliding off his pack. "Move it kinetically. Mostly." He yanked a roll of det cord from his pack, and then a block of C4, cut into neat little self-adhesive sheets. "It's brittle. You saw for yourself. We need to shatter it into much smaller pieces, then we can dig him out using those." He jerked his head towards a wall where a few gardening tools had survived the looting, including a pick and a small shovel.

"Mac . . ." The other tech seemed at a loss for words. "The concussion alone could kill him . . . and we have to recalculate where we think Dalton ended up –"

Mac nodded quickly, ripping a couple sheets of C4 from the stack before pulling his swiss army knife out of his vest. "Yeah. Do you mind getting started on that?" He made a small incision in the burlap, enough to pass the C4 through, and then started rifling through his pack for remote detonators.

". . . Mac . . . dammit!" But it sounded oddly resigned, and then Robinson quickly shouldered his rifle and starting rooting through his own vest for pencil and paper. "If we're off even a little –"

"I know." He could probably make a stethoscope, but his odds of not getting shot while he crawled all over that pile listening for Jack to maybe tap, or maybe not –

And fast math was better than no math at all.

He heard Charlie key his own radio, explaining their plan to his overwatch, and Mac was reminded that he'd been silent too long, and Dalton could start on another of his long-winded attempts to reassure him that it wasn't his fault. He pre-empted it, wishing there was some way to rig his transmit button so that it was depressed without tying up one of his hands.

"Hey, don't feel too bad for my dad. He and my grandfather got the shed rebuilt that summer. It was a good excuse to upgrade his tools. Which came in handy when I was building my first engine. I was in sixth grade, and I really wanted to win the science fair before I moved on to junior high school . . ."

He told Jack about the science fairs that came after, which of course meant he had to tell him a little more about Bozer, and that led to a few of the more creative ways they used to occupy their summers, and soon enough he had four fertilizer bombs rigged to remote detonate, picks attached to the back of both his and Charlie's packs, and it sounded like the ready reaction force was handily taking care of the last Taliban fighter who'd been holed up in that attic across the street.

Charlie offered Mac his notepad, but Mac shook his head. "I trust you."

And he realized that it was absolutely true. He and Charlie Robinson hadn't worked closely in a while. Not since that awful, thirty-three hour period in Gardez that had been unofficially dubbed the 'Day of a Thousand IEDs.' Charlie had sought him out again just three weeks later, when they had the memorial for Pena on base, to express his condolences. They hadn't worked together a day since. Not until now.

Not until intel suggested Sharan was the next target for the man they called the Ghost.

If he'd been the one behind Gardez, behind the bomb that killed his CO, then it was possible that he could have hidden a device in the building. One that Mac had overlooked. Whoever had brought that building down knew about engineering, knew a US platoon was being deployed, knew leveling the building would cut the element in half and guaranteed an effective ambush –

He should have seen it. He should have looked harder. He'd made a mistake, and Mac would be damned if he was about to make another.

Charlie Robinson's math – it was good. He'd stake his life on it, and he was staking his cover's. Just like he was staking all their lives on his own math, his estimates for nitrogen content in the fertilizer, the hope that the bags were actually the weight printed on them, that the void Jack was in was really at least sixteen cubic feet –

Robinson gave him a nod. "Yeah. I trust you too. Now let's get your overwatch the hell outta there before the Rangers force us to fall back - at gunpoint." He smiled as he said it, but Mac didn't question for a second whether or not the other man was serious. He was. "Javier says they sent 'the good mofos', so I'm going to bet they're not as easy to steamroll as McCartney."

"Safe wager," Mac agreed readily, shouldering the first bag and scooping up a second under his left arm. "Javier gonna tell us when?"

Charlie huffed a laugh as he hefted up his second fertilizer bomb. "When," he grunted, and without hesitation Mac bolted out of the store.

The timing had been spot on; two Army Rangers had advanced up the street, on the same side as the now silent Taliban position, and the first man waved at him – silently – then held up his right hand, finger towards the sky, and made a casual swirl.

Return to the rally point.

Mac gave the man a firm nod, then sprinted instead towards the flaming remains of the humvee. The debris cloud might have dissipated too much to be useful cover, but the smoke from the 'vee was nice and thick. He heard someone shout – with the quality of a stage whisper, as if that was gonna help – and Mac ignored it, running flat out for the humvee. As soon as he reached it he took a knee, more to re-secure his burdens and give Charlie a second to catch up than because he thought someone was going to shoot at them. And sure enough, Robinson was right behind him.

And one of the Army Rangers was right behind _him._

Jack's advice regarding combat orders was succinct and practical. _Best way to avoid havin' to disobey a direct order is to never receive it in the first place._ Mac picked up his sacks of dung and he _ran_.

He made the remaining twenty yards to the beginning of the collapse, dodging around smaller chunks of concrete as he analyzed the wreckage for a ready climbing point. On the plus side, it was almost solid cement, so it wasn't likely to shift as much as cement with a large component of steel rebar and other building materials. On the flip side, it was almost solid cement, and if it did slip, it was going to do it like it meant it, and a great big pile of concrete could come rolling down on him like a dull grey avalanche.

He had a free hand for climbing, but he used it instead to key his radio. "I'm here, buddy, I'm right here. Lemme know when you can hear anything."

Then he headed up.

No one stopped him. He heard a few voices calling – some with plenty of authority – but none were Charlie Robinson, and besides, once he was up top, there was a decent argument to let them finish the attempt. He couldn't do it without all four fertilizer bombs, though, and when Mac was about twenty-five feet up the pile, and in danger of being spotted from the opposite side, he finally hunkered down in a small ledge, and looked back.

And down.

And then he remembered, far too late, that he wasn't all that crazy about heights.

He was standing on an unstable pile of rocks, potentially in view of snipers, about to set off improvised fertilizer bombs in an attempt to basically depth-charge his overwatch to safety. Shattering the top slab and moving all that weight could trigger any number of catastrophic failures of the structure he was so precariously balanced on, the concrete was who knew how old and baked brittle by the desert sun, he could have been wrong about the detonation point or there could have been more than one explosive –

"Jesus _Christ_ , are you part mountain goat!?" The voice was absolutely _not_ Charlie's, and Mac flinched, then turned – just his head – and found another soldier, in basic, unmarked Army BDUs, perched on a ledge half as wide as his, about three feet above him. He had his rifle at the ready – not pointed at Mac – and his camo-greased face looked almost friendly.

"What the hell's so hard about 'return to the rally point,' specialist?" It was quite conversational, as if the Ranger regularly found himself clinging by inches to ragged concrete twenty-five feet above the ground, and Mac swallowed hard to ensure his vocal chords were going to cooperate.

"One of ours is trapped in the rubble. I just need five minutes –"

"So I heard." The Ranger turned his attention downrange, and panting from below alerted Mac to Charlie's approach. "You got four. There are twenty T-men inbound. I tell you to cover, you _take fuckin' cover_. This ain't the hill I'm dyin' on."

It sounded just like something Jack would say, and Mac gave the Ranger another nod – this time a grateful one - and turned to find Charlie was only a few feet below. The Ranger that had been on his _tail_ was scaling the southern end of the debris pile, obviously moving into position to cover them, and Charlie gave Mac a tight smile.

"Javier?" Mac asked, already knowing the answer, and the smile got slightly broader.

"Yeah." Charlie hefted one of the fertilizer bombs higher on his shoulder. "They won't be able to hold this position long, we gotta hustle. We're in the ballpark, head north another six to ten meters."

Mac turned to do so when a faint pop in his ear stilled him instantly. "-'c'n . . . hear'ya-"

"Jack!" he bellowed, not bothering to key his radio. He needed Jack to hear his actual voice, not his transmitted one. "Jack, I'm right here! You hear me?!"

His cover had never stopped broadcasting. " . . . th' . . . three'b'five . . ."

Three by five. In radio parlance, not great but readable. "Good! I'm gonna come higher. You tell me hot or cold!"

Completely ignoring the scowling Ranger, Mac slapped the fertilizer bags onto the nearest decent surface and scrambled up towards the top of the pile, until he was balanced precariously on a sloped slab of roofing concrete, six meters north and dangerously close to the peak. "How about now, Jack?!"

His radio hissed in his ear, but Jack didn't come back.

"Jack!" he shouted again. " _Jack_! You copy?!"

More static. Maybe a sigh.

"You wanna wave a flag there, Crazy Horse, maybe pop smoke?" the Ranger suggested acidly, and his much flatter profile prompted Mac to also crouch lower, snatching his swiss army knife out of his vest pocket. Now that he was 'in the ballpark,' as Charlie put it, there was actually a quieter way to get a location on his overwatch.

He struck the concrete with the closed multi-tool, making sure the metal had good contact, and tapped a pattern he knew Jack would recognize. "Come on, dude," he urged, then tapped it out again. "Come on . . ."

A crackle in his ear, that sounded like an impact on a throat mike. No words.

Behind him, Mac heard the Ranger start muttering, and Charlie scurried up and deposited his two bags on the gravel and concrete. They made pretty decent thunks, but if Jack heard them, he didn't say.

The two EOD technicians locked eyes, and Mac could tell from the strained look in Charlie's that he was thinking the same thing. They were out of time. "Jack!" Mac shouted again, this time directly at the concrete below him. "Dammit, Jack, answer me!"

And, _finally_ , he got back a mumble that was actually words. ". . . y'mad . . . ?"

"No!" he called back, unable to keep the relief out of his voice. "Sorry about the wait! It's about to get loud, okay? Just hang on!"

More confident that they had the right location, Mac took quick stock of what he could see. The roof was basically in one piece; it had shattered on the north side from the shaft in the center out to where he was, broken into about four pieces that easily weighed eight hundred pounds apiece. But he had a feeling Jack was under the part that was still mostly intact, and the fact that the east edge had partially crumbled gave him an idea.

"Okay – we focus the blasts to run right here." He placed his splayed hand right above where he'd been tapping. "The concrete around that shaft's thicker, so our first bag goes right there, as deep into that crack as you can wedge it."

Mac reached for the second bag, and as soon as he got a hand on it it gave a little pop, and a small bit of fertilizer flew festively into the air.

The Ranger up there with them returned fire _immediately_ ; both Mac and Charlie made themselves as small of targets as possible as gunfire seemed to pop up all around them. When it didn't immediately let up, Charlie started bellycrawling towards the gap that indicated where the shaft had once been, and Mac snagged the second bag of fertilizer and waited for a break.

"Did I tell you to take cover?!" the Ranger bellowed at him, stopping fire only to swap in a fresh mag. "No! I fuckin' didn't! _Move your goddamn ass_ , soldier!"

Mac didn't need to be told twice.

He scrabbled over the mostly intact cement, flinching only when a bullet kicked up dust not two feet in front of him. It actually made a decent little gouge, basically where he needed to put a plug of C4 anyway, so he fished one of the ones he'd prepped out of his pocket and mashed it into place before scurrying to the next largest crack. Counting on it to be one of the thicker points, he dropped the bag about four feet from the edge, then quickly lowered himself down to the ledge beneath it, sprinting back for another bag. Charlie had similarly placed his first fertilizer bomb, and he waited by the other two until Mac made it back.

"See that vent?!"

It was a toilet vent, hardly more than a few inches of PVC pipe sticking up through the ruined cement, basically in the center of the most intact slab of roof. With zero cover anywhere near it, absurdly close to the peak of the collapsed rubble. And Mac knew immediately what Charlie was getting at, and that the other man was right. He simply nodded once to show he understood, took a deep breath, tucked the bag of fertilizer under his left arm, and sprinted straight for it.

After a few steps, he zigged hard left, and then right, like a quarterback dodging imaginary linebackers on his way towards the end zone.

 _If a sniper's takin' fire, he's gonna start layin' rounds in front of you and hope you run into 'em_ , Jack had told him once in that blunt, earnest way of his. _You gotta keep him guessin' where that's gonna be._

It was the first piece of anti-sniper tactical advice the Delta operator had ever given him, and Mac put it to good use.

From his vantage point Mac could finally see the street on the opposite side of the collapse, but he didn't even glance at it. His entire focus on was on that vent. He heard someone yell at him to take cover, but there was none to be had, then three bullets zipped by in quick succession and Mac made another sharp course correction, slipping on the gravel-covered concrete and almost losing his footing. Rather than trying to recover – and potentially staying in one position too long – Mac used it and hugged the fertilizer bomb to his chest, falling straight onto the vent.

Had the bag not been there, he would have been impaled, and the only recently healed wound in his chest throbbed with the impact. But it was worth the pain. Some of the fertilizer was going to be lost down the vent, but that humble PVC pipe would provide a much deeper impact for the otherwise surface explosion, fully bisecting the slab.

Somewhere nearby, Mac heard a single shot, with a slightly deeper quality to it that was unmistakably a Barrett, the same rifle Jack preferred. Mac waited a breath, then craned his head around to look back the way he'd come. Sure enough, the Ranger up there with him waved him on.

Mac wasn't sure if it had been Javier or not, but a US Army sniper had just saved his life.

He made good time back to cover, dropping down to that second ledge and hurrying back to rendezvous with Charlie, who was prepping the demo. He'd clearly placed his other C4 plugs because he had those remotes in hand, and Mac added the remote for the four fertilizer bombs to Charlie's three. Belatedly he remembered his own plug of C4, and fished that one out as well.

The Ranger up there with them did a double-take at the impressive collection. "What the fucking shit . . .?" It sounded rhetorical, but Mac answered the unasked question anyway.

"We've gotta blow them in sequence. And . . . we should probably move."

The Ranger gave him a sour look and grabbed his radio. "TOC, Lancer Zero Eight, be advised, EOD on site, AO's about to get lit up. Break. Sabre Sabre, requesting an assist at ground zero. Need two flying to cover the north, north-east. Lancer will take ground cover from the south, south-east, and west. One EOD sniper is covering east, callsign Snakebite Two Two. Break. Lancer Lancer, hustle it up here, and bring the crunchies. We're diggin' for coal. Over."

The Ranger had never stopped looking at him, and once he got off his radio, he frowned. "What?" he asked, a little defensively. "Dalton sure as hell ain't gold. And this cluster's one hundred percent on EOD. You're gonna need all the help you can get."

Mac realized his expression must have been one of puzzlement, but it wasn't because of the information. He knew he, and by extension Charlie, were going to face consequences for not falling back to the rally point. The attempt, no matter the result, was worth it. It was the collection of callsigns that confused him.

And the fact that the Ranger had called Jack by name. Dalton.

"How many men are out there?" he asked carefully, and the Ranger smirked.

"This position secure?"

"No," Charlie jumped in, already on the move. "We wanna be on the south end."

The Ranger didn't have to be told twice either, and the three of them quickly climbed down and clambered over to a safer position. Safer should have been on the ground, but Mac wasn't willing to give up the time; as soon as they blew that concrete, they had to get right back up there and get Jack out of it.

He keyed his radio. "Jack, you still with me?"

The silence stretched on long enough that he nearly tried again.

". . . 's'not y'r fault, Ang'gus."

The audible effort that had gone into forming those words, making certain that they would be intelligible, chilled him far more completely than the winter air, and Mac licked his bottom lip. "We've gotta break up the concrete above you, it's going to get noisy and – some of the debris might slip. I _promise_ you, we'll dig you right out. Here we go, big guy."

Charlie had arranged the remotes in order, and passed Mac two – one of which being the fertilizer bombs, which would blow last, taking advantage of the smaller cracks the C4 plugs would make. It was far too late to triple- check anything, the explosives were in place and they'd burned through their four minutes, and Mac didn't hesitate for another second. He counted it down, and Charlie counted it with him.

The first three pops were highly unimpressive, not even as loud as M6 fire. When Mac got to 'four' he depressed the button on his plug, and when he got to five, the slight delay of the C4 detonation catalyzing the diesel and fertilizer felt like a lifetime.

They were relatively sheltered from both the blast wave and the larger pieces of debris, so when Mac felt the ground literally moving underneath his feet, he knew it was actually the debris pile shifting. If it settled too much, there was a risk Jack would slip deeper into the debris, and they'd never be able to dig him out in time. Mac immediately started up the slope, slipping on crumbling chunks of concrete as they rushed around him in a miniature avalanche. Someone shouted, but it was pretty quiet in comparison to the shifting and crackling concrete, and when Mac finally reached the top, he saw exactly what he hoped to see.

The concrete roof had been shattered, into human-moveable pieces, and it had buckled in several places that could indicate voids underneath, but it hadn't caved in. It was a textbook demo.

Unfortunately, his toilet vent had been vaporized, and all the landmarks he'd used to identify the exact area Jack had been in were gone.

Mac mashed the radio button on his chest. "Jack! You copy?!"

If anything came back, he didn't hear it.

Without wasting another second, Mac crept carefully onto the shattered surface, placing each boot very deliberately and making certain his footing was secure before moving on. " _Jack!_ Gimme a shout, big guy. You read me?!"

Static.

When he got to the place that seemed 'the right ballpark' Mac ripped off his pack and freed up the small hand pick he'd commandeered from the hardware store. It was meant to dig through hard dirt and rocks; it was actually the right tool for the job, and it did it well. When he reached the scraps of a dusty, faded red rug, he knew he'd hit the fourth floor, and immediately moved on.

No void. Therefore no Jack.

" _Jack_!" He shouted it into the radio, hoping either the speaker in his overwatch's ear or his actual voice would somehow get through, even as he moved another five feet north and started digging. Someone grabbed his right shoulder - Charlie – and he saw the man head another eight feet to the north and break out his handheld spade. Spacing themselves out where the support beams of concrete should be running. Mac's internal clock hit forty seconds.

Small arms fire was starting to kick up, and a quick glance found their Ranger up there with them, laying down suppressive fire.

"Jack, I know it was loud buddy, you might not be able to hear me." The air in the void with him should have partially buffered him, but his ears could be ringing. Or the void could have partially collapsed, and he could be pinned down in small pieces of concrete and couldn't get his hand on his radio.

Or the concussion could have knocked him out.

Or the concussion could have killed him.

Or debris could have filled the void, and he could be suffocating.

Pain registered, in one of his fingers, and Mac plucked a small sliver of concrete out of his right hand and realized it was exactly the right size to jam into his transmit button. So he did.

They were going to find Jack, one way or another, but Mac wasn't willing to leave him waiting alone in the dark, and he needed both his hands to dig.

"Hey, so remember you asked me earlier why I didn't get a Christmas card from my parents?" This time he kept his voice to a speaking volume, knowing the throat mic was picking it up and the automatic fire around him was preventing anyone else from overhearing. He tried to keep his voice easy as he dug.

"I've never gotten one from my mom. She died when I was five. I can remember her face, and the sound of her voice, but not much else. She, uh, used to let me help fold the towels, and try to help make the beds. I imagine it would've taken less time if I hadn't."

It was probably equivalent to trying to make a bed with your Labrador helping. Mac paused his monologue as he started to pry up a larger chunk, legitimately startled when another pair of hands appeared out of nowhere to help. On his left, Milo, their medic, grimaced, and then they had it up and over, and found a little pocket of air underneath.

They'd found one of the channels, which were by far the most likely voids to have Jack Daltons in them.

"Charlie, here!" Mac shouted, knowing it was going over the radio too. "I think we're right on top of ya, big guy." He started digging out the smaller chunks in the same way his imaginary bed-making Labrador would – it probably looked silly, but was the most efficient method he had with the tool in his hand. Another man appeared, on the other side of Milo, and their Ranger took up a defensive position nearby, laying down near continuous fire.

"As for dad, well – he left when I was ten." Some of the smallest bits of concrete started disappearing into an invisible hole underneath some of the larger chunks, and Mac redoubled his efforts. "He was an inventor, he'd leave for - weeks at a time on business but – I really thought he'd make it back for - my birthday. Never did. Harry - my grandfather – stepped in and raised me after that."

More soldiers had arrived, McCartney among them, and they spread themselves out along the suspected length of the channel, digging with their bare hands.

Mac's internal clock hit two minutes.

"Uh, told you about Bozer's parents – they're pretty cool. Spent a lot of time over there. But I never – had what you had with your father. I'd like to hear – more about him, so – you wanna start talking, I'm - listening –"

More of the mid-sized chunks fell away, and Mac finally saw something that wasn't just grey concrete and gravel, wasn't just the wreckage of an abandoned home.

It was a dusty boot. Army issue.

" _Here!_ " he bellowed to the other men up there, pawing through the gravel-sized rocks surrounding that boot. Milo was up near where he figured Jack's head was, and Robinson joined him immediately. Within twenty seconds, every available man had gathered around them, and enough of the concrete had been pulled away that they could make out a body in the rubble.

What wasn't grey was bloody.

There was no room to get up to his head, a litter appeared like magic and Mac quickly dug out Jack's other ankle. On three they all managed to lift him up out of the three foot depression and onto the stretcher, and then they were moving, there were two more Rangers up on the pile with them, laying down suppressive fire, and Mac realized with a start how much he'd been blocking out.

There were almost a dozen men scrambling over the rubble. Their entire unit and then some. He was too worried about losing his footing and dropping his side of the stretcher to identify them, before he knew it they were on the ground and someone – maybe the Ranger's medic – shouldered him out of the way.

And Jack never moved. Never grimaced, never spoke. His face was coated in blood and dust, there was no way to tell if it was fresh or old, if it had happened during the initial collapse, or the explosions necessary to get him free. His hands were loosely curled and relaxed in a way they never were, not even when the sniper was asleep. Mac honestly wasn't even sure the man was breathing.

If he replaced the concrete dust with burns and blackened skin, the torn BDU's with a shredded bomb suit –

"You still don't know a goddamn order when you hear one, do you, son."

It was the words, more than the voice, that got Mac's attention, made him realize that someone was actually speaking to _him._ Mac searched the faces of the men hurrying around him, looking for the speaker, and found an older man, clearly a Ranger given the lack of identifying badges on his BDUs, giving him a long, penetrating look.

And one of the callsigns finally clicked.

Lancer.

He'd heard it before. These were the very same elite Rangers that had been sent to rescue Mac from Shahjoy, where four Taliban had attempted to abduct him right out from under Jack's nose way back at the beginning of the tour. Not that Jack had let them, and not that they'd needed Army Ranger backup –

But the man had clearly known Jack. Had called him by his rank. And Jack had done the same.

"Major," Mac acknowledged warily.

The cold look didn't go anywhere. "Get that radio fixed and get your ass back to the rally point to await further orders."

Any hope of being allowed to accompany his overwatch evaporated in that moment. Not that he'd had any reason to expect it in the first place, he wasn't injured and the fight was clearly still waging, there were more buildings to clear –

"Yessir," he said automatically, his mind still a thousand miles away, churning through options and variables.

While the combat engineer let that sort of thing go, the Ranger did not, and one hundred percent of Mac's attention suddenly focused on the man who had just grabbed him by his vest and thrown him against the wall of a house.

"Listen up," the major continued, his voice deadly calm. "The asshole that just dropped a building on Dalton? He or she might still be out here somewhere. You and your bullshit team of EOD are the only men on site that can do anything about that, so _do your goddamn job_ and get my men outta here without blowing them up first. You read me?"

There was only one correct answer. "Yessir."

After a few seconds of judging his sincerity – and Mac was plenty sincere this time – he was roughly released. Mac thought the man might actually physically insist his orders were followed, but instead the major completely ignored him, jogging back to his men with a hand on his radio. Mac shrugged the tense muscles in his back, which were still smarting from their unexpected contact with dried mud, and belatedly realized it had hurt because he wasn't wearing his pack.

He'd left it up top when they'd evacuated Jack.

Mac eyed the rubble again before concluding disobeying orders a third time was definitely not an acceptable strategy, and he also started towards a few of the infantrymen from his squad. His eyes fell on a soldier about twenty feet down the dusty road, watching him. He was wearing unmarked BDUs and specialized gear, and had a sniper's rifle on his back, but didn't seem to be paying any attention to the rest of the Rangers. Just him. Mac caught his stare and held it for a few seconds until someone clapped him on the arm.

Mac flinched, but it was just Charlie, holding out a dusty pack.

"Thought you might need this," the tech prompted, and Mac nodded quickly and took it, slipping it over his shoulder. When he turned back, the African American soldier who had been staring at him was nowhere to be seen.

Neither was Jack. He'd been carried off in the interim, double timed to wherever a casualty evac pilot could safely land a helo. On one hand, that was a good sign – it meant he was still alive. And it occurred to Mac, belatedly, that he didn't even know where Dalton would end up. Depending how critical he was, it might be the nearest base, or he might be airlifted straight to Kabul –

"Mac."

He absently shoved his left arm into the strap and turned back to find Charlie giving him a once over.

"You okay?"

"Yeah," he said automatically, remembering to fish out the concrete that was wedged into his radio transmit button. No use broadcasting to an empty frequency. "Yeah, I'm good." He frowned at a smear of blood, near the radio button, and turned to inspect his hand only to find that his fingers - on both hands - were bleeding in several places.

Of course. He hadn't been wearing gloves. Mac flexed them a few times, but they were basically numb. The concrete dust had done an admirable job of soaking up any blood and sweat, acting almost like climbing chalk. Good thing no biologicals were suspected of being used, or he'd be on that CASEVAC flight with his cover.

"You look it," Charlie told him, and Mac dusted off his hands and started jogging after their retreating squad without responding.

The rally point was less than a mile away, in that borderline residential/commercial side of Sharan, and Mac wasn't surprised to find that Lancer was nowhere to be seen. They'd doubtlessly been deployed back towards the insurgents, to cut them off and get the rest of Snakebite safely out of the northern section of the city. A small command area had been set up in an abandoned bakery, and Mac loitered about twenty yards away from it, in no hurry to begin one of the several ass-reamings that he knew were coming his way. Still too wired to stand still, he crouched down to put his pack back in order.

_The asshole that just dropped a building on Dalton? He or she might still be out here somewhere._

That was true. And now that he knew he was looking for invisible explosives, it was going to be nearly impossible to clear any of the buildings. The combat engineers were there to identify critical infrastructure, the buildings most likely to be targeted, so at least they had a place to start. But –

Something thunked loudly into the side of his helmet, like two turtle shells clapping together, and Mac glared up, weirdly expecting to find Jack, only to see the offender was once again Charlie. The other technician gave him a smug grin and plopped his helmet back on his head.

"Hey, I'm not above turtle fucking if that's what it takes," he announced airily, buckling his chin strap, and Mac went back to his half-destroyed pack.

The other technician – like Jack would have been - was not so easily deterred. "Mac, anything could have brought that building down. Could've been an RPG, clearly they've got 'em-"

Mac shook his head, confirming that he'd tucked his multitool in his vest pocket, where it belonged. "Only if the person who fired it did it from inside the room." There was no exterior window that was in line of sight of any of those sixteen critical points. If someone had detonated a grenade or a rocket, they would have been inside the building when it collapsed.

It wasn't impossible. Just improbable.

"MacGyver, until we do the post-blast, we don't know what happened."

That was true enough. Last time he'd been permitted to do an immediate post-blast, mainly because he'd been hit with the blast wave from the explosion that killed his CO. Any EOD at risk of a concussion wasn't permitted to play with live bombs until cleared, and he hadn't been cleared until the following night. He'd talked the site commander into letting him pick through the rubble instead. This time –

This time he was fine. Worst case scenario, he'd leave a bloody fingerprint on a bomb. No one could do a post-blast on that building until the area around it was cleared of threats. It might be days before they knew what actually happened.

Which meant Charlie was right, and Pena would have said the same thing; it was out of his control, and he could worry about it later. Right now there was something more urgent to address. "Charlie . . . listen, man, I know it's not much, but thank you." He zipped the last pocket on his pack and climbed to his feet, extending a hand. "You took a big risk, and you didn't have to. I couldn't have gotten him out of there without you."

Robinson gave him a long look, then clasped his hand. "You woulda done the same for me, for Javier, hell, for anyone in this outfit. Standing by and waiting wasn't an option. However this turns out . . . don't second guess yourself, Mac. There's no one I'd rather have working a disposal with me."

It was at least a little affirming to hear – if he'd truly gone off the rails, if the plan had no hope of working, he knew Robinson would have spoken up and told him so. They shook hands, and then Mac re-shouldered his pack and eyed the temporary command center. "Not sure either one of us are going to be working on disposals after this."

"Nah," Charlie denied, as they headed towards what might be the beginning of a court marshal. "We're too valuable. Skill set's too important. Besides, I'll take a little heat for Dalton. Javier vouches for him, and he's a tough SOB to impress."

Which brought up another uncomfortable topic. "You said those Rangers are personal friends of Javier's?"

Charlie gave him a solemn nod. "Lancer, yeah. Spec Ops are a tightknit group."

Not unlike EOD. Which was kind of Mac's point. "What does Javier know about the other guys? Their callsign's Saber."

Instead of answering, Charlie glanced causally to their left, where two men were leaning against the storefront opposite command, apparently having a friendly conversation and completely ignoring everyone else on the street. Mac hadn't given them a second look earlier, too absorbed in his own thoughts and his pack, and he realized with a start that one of them was the black soldier that had been staring him down earlier.

"He's worked ops with them but they've never been stationed at the same base. They're Delta, so there's a little . . . _friendly_ competition."

Delta. And odds were, spec ops being close-knit –

These men might know Jack. For all Mac knew, they might have been Jack's old team. And they had been laying down cover fire while Jack's new team literally blasted him out of a concrete tomb.

The two soldiers – operators, Mac corrected himself – didn't seem to notice the attention at all, apparently simply waiting for orders, and the implication there didn't sit too well with him. "I, uh, I don't think I'm their favorite person right now."

"They don't have the whole story, Mac. And neither do you." Charlie stopped them about ten feet from command. "There's time for blame tomorrow. Right now we got a city to clear. Javier'll watch your back like it was mine. Okay?"

It didn't work out that way.

Mac didn't recognize the officer in command – his insignia indicated he was a sergeant – and the moment he looked up and saw them, he gave them a couple slow claps.

"Well look here, boys. Looks like we're in the presence of a pair of bona-fide god-damned American heroes."

The other five men and women in the room largely ignored the sergeant, and Mac disliked him instantly.

"Finally decided to maybe clock back in, see what work piled up while you were single-handedly diverting critical resources from the actual rescue operation?"

Technically _and_ figuratively wrong, Mac silently corrected him, it was four pairs of hands and two people –

"Reporting as ordered, sir." Charlie's voice was calm and cool, and Mac kept his mouth closed and his face expressionless.

Clearly neither were the correct response. "You wanna tell me what you two cowboys thought you were doing?"

Mac knew from the set of Charlie's jaw that he wasn't a fan, either, but his voice was perfectly level when he replied, again, for the both of them. "Protecting our brothers and sisters, sir. And we're eager to get back to it."

The sergeant snorted in disgust, turning his attention back to a topographical map of the area. "Tell that to the pancake they just airlifted outta here."

It was getting harder to stay quiet, and though Mac knew logically that anything he said or did in retaliation would be held against Charlie, too, it seemed like it would be worth it. Fortunately salvation arrived in the form of superseding orders. The comms guy – another soldier Mac didn't recognize – took his hand off his headphones and set down his pen.

"Sergeant, TOC wants EOD dispatched to the west and south, coordinates . . . uh,163 284 and 175 122. Four man teams. They're assigning Saber Zero Four to Snakebite One One."

So much for Javier watching his back.

The sergeant blew out a breath and checked the coordinates his comm guy had rattled off. "Well . . . looks like it's a second chance for you gents. How about you go find the bombs _before_ they go off this time, huh?" Without waiting for a response, he turned back to the comm officer. "Let's pull straws on the assignments, no one's dumb enough to volunteer."

 _To work with these idiots_ went unspoken. Luckily, there was neither a question nor an order in the words, and both he and Charlie remained silent. They remained that way until the teams had been assigned – one technician, one combat engineer, one infantry, and one overwatch – and a piece of paper was thrust into each of their hands.

"You have your orders. Follow them."

"Yessir," they both responded, and once dismissed, there was nothing left to do but walk out of the bakery-turned-operations-center and to their assembling teams. Mac had ended up being paired with Perugu and Timmons, so at least part of his own squad, and Charlie gave him a nod as he broke off to find his own team.

That was the last time they crossed paths. Perugu barely made eye contact with Mac, and outside of giving him the radio frequency for their team, he didn't say another word. Timmons, their infantryman, kept shooting glances at him as they headed to a vehicle, but Mac didn't particularly want to catch his eyes, and read either the pity or the anger he was sure to find in them.

When it became clear to Mac that no one else was hurrying to catch up with them, and none of his companions seemed to be surprised by that fact, he finally gave up, and grabbed his radio. "Saber Zero Four, this is Snakebite One One, what's your position, over."

He released the radio and obediently climbed into the front passenger seat – EOD always took the front seat, to spot IEDs buried in the roads - and was legitimately taken by surprise when the call was answered promptly.

"Snakebite One One, this is Saber Zero Four. Waiting on you to un-ass the rally point. Over."

The drawl, the inflection, even the word choice was reminiscent of Dalton. The speaker had that same easy Texan accent, and given how proud Jack was of being from Texas, the odds that these two men - both Texans, both Delta, both operating in the Afghanistan theater - wouldn't have run into each other at some point was nearly zero.

It was going to be a long day.

By the time the three of them made it to the coordinate grid that they had been assigned, Timmons could no longer tolerate the quiet. "These guys won't know what hit 'em. You see how many triple threats we got with us?"

The unwelcome reminder that the city was crawling with highly trained, deadly Special Forces operators that might not be very happy with him prickled the skin on the back of Mac's neck. Instead of answering, he turned to their engineer, who was trying to line up his map to the buildings he could see with his own eyes.

They were on the western edge of what Mac would call downtown Sharan, so there were several multi-story buildings interspersed with small businesses and older homes. There wasn't much battle damage on this side of the city, and a faint stream of smoke was curling up from one of the nearby hovels.

Meaning this side of the city might not have been fully evacuated.

Perugu finally responded by snorting. "Fat lot of good they'll do us, they're all on the north side. We'll be lucky if those fleeing insurgents don't run right into the broadside of our goddamn 'vee."

"You got anything?" Mac asked, trying to get them back on topic, and the engineer sucked down a deep breath.

"I'm sorry, Hollywood," he said, slowly, then looked up from the map. His expression was hard to read. "I'm the guy who called in the RPG. I didn't think you could get him out."

The tense silence that followed was a hundred times more uncomfortable than the pretending nothing had happened, and Mac broke it with a grin he didn't really feel. "Look, I'm glad you did. It got us those Rangers double-time."

Perugu scoffed. "You know what I-"

"I know that you were on top of that building with me, digging him out," Mac cut him off. Then he held out his fist. "Thanks. Both of you."

They both hesitated, but then brought their fists down on his, and after that, things settled down into somewhat frightening normalcy. The engineer picked out the buildings and other infrastructure that were most crucial to road traffic – or most likely to cause secondary collateral damage, like explosions or collapsing onto other buildings – and Mac inspected them while Timmons provided ground cover. The afternoon wore on, and with every building and pipe that Mac cleared, his unease ticked up another notch.

What in the hell was he missing? There was something off and he could feel it, just like he'd felt it in Ghanzi, forty-seven days before his loud-mouth knuckle-dragging overwatch was set to fly home forever. It seemed like a lifetime ago, but in reality –

In reality it was a little less than a year.

He'd known Jack Dalton basically one year. Just one.

Mac took a deep breath around a tickle in his lungs - that was no doubt caused by dust inhalation - and then heaved himself out from under the ancient Corolla. Timmons was nearby, watching closely, and Mac shook his head and leaned back against the car in disgust.

Nothing. There was nothing. No device near the fuel tank, nothing on the ignition, nothing on the axles that would be triggered if the car was pushed. It was perfectly positioned near a small clinic, that thankfully appeared to have been evacuated, but then why would they leave a perfectly good car instead of _using_ it for said evacuation . . .?

His helmet rolled into a dent in the side of the door, and Mac's eyes naturally fell on a water tower perched on top of a three story apartment building, attempting to provide at least meager water pressure for the residents inside. It was exactly the place Jack would have picked for his nest – three hundred and sixty degree visibility, durable structure, multiple exits off the roof.

And not a building he'd cleared.

The feeling that something wasn't right ticked up another notch, at the same time his radio popped. "Snakebite One One, you got about zero seconds for sittin' around. Get up off your ass. Over."

Mac squinted up at the tower, wondering if the tiny bump at the top was real or just his imagination, and then he finally put his finger on what was bothering him. He leaned up off the car and rotated on one knee, looking at the passenger side door.

It was distended, not dented; the angle was very shallow and gentle, but the door was definitely bulging outward. There was no point of impact, he wouldn't have really noticed it unless the light hit it right or his helmet hadn't rolled off of it, and Mac ever so carefully edged away from the car.

He'd checked the ignition first from under the car, then under the hood, then under the steering column, but the only door he'd opened was the driver's side door. Mac studied the passenger door for another moment, noting the position of the window, and the lack of any scratches on the glass. Then he peered into the seal around the glass, gently using his swiss army knife to pry the dry-rotted rubber aside in several places.

Once he was satisfied, he grabbed his radio. "Guys, I got a possible IED outside the clinic, back off two blocks until I confirm, over."

Then he carefully circled the vehicle and gently opened the driver's side door once more. As before, nothing happened, and he used the longest blade of his swiss army knife to tease the driver's side seal away from the glass.

It was similarly weirdly missing the solenoid necessary to roll the window up and down.

More certain now, Mac carefully pried the interior surface of the door off the metal, cutting the rubber where he needed to, and discovered densely packed explosives where insulation and certain features of the door had once been. The wire for the solenoid was still present, meaning power was present, and Mac wedged his upper body between the front and back seats over the console. It wasn't comfortable, and it put his ass in the air and his head on the floorboards, but that was exactly where he wanted to be.

There were no unusual wires under the passenger seat. No indication that putting weight on it was going to trigger any sort of device.

Once unwedged, it was simply a matter of prying the inside of the passenger side door off – while it was closed, which made it a little more interesting – and disconnecting the other solenoid wire from the extra piece that had been run to the door's handle. He then crawled into the back seat and repeated the process.

Three of the four doors had been rigged because the driver had to be able to drive the car to the site, and then safely exit. If anyone had attempted to use the vehicle to evacuate, or he'd opened any other door but the driver side door –

And the mechanism was totally invisible from outside the vehicle. If they hadn't overstuffed the doors with explosives and nails, he never would have seen it.

Mac wasted no time in getting back on the radio. "Saber – uh –" The number eluded him, but the sniper was the only one of their team with that callsign, so Mac figured forgetting the designation wasn't the end of the world, "- I need you back on the main channel. Inform the TOC we've got cars wired to detonate when the doors are opened. Driver's side door is safe, and the other three can be disarmed from inside the vehicle." Belatedly he realized he hadn't actually checked the trunk, and he crawled into the back seat to see if he could fold one forward and at least get a visual.

Once again, Saber responded quickly. "Snakebite One One, good copy, vehicles with doors rigged to detonate, driver's side door is safe, and once disarmed, EOD will take a fucking nap in it. Over."

It wasn't worth the retort, and Mac carefully checked the back seat for any trigger mechanism before he folded it forward. There was visibility into the trunk, and Mac was relieved to see it was empty.

To further give the impression that the car was safe to get inside. This was meant to terrify and demoralize as well as reduce the citizens' access to medical care.

Two hours later he found another, this one built into a curb of a relatively narrow street beside a pharmacy, hoping for a larger vehicle – like, say, a delivery truck, a bus, or an Army humvee – to drive over it. An hour after that Saber informed him that another EOD unit had discovered an IED on a septic tank cover that was designed to blow when liquid inside a timer froze solid in the lowering temperatures and broke the glass, which would complete a circuit. Luckily ambient was still thirty-four degrees. The gas in the septic tank would have brought down the tenant building.

Mac's unit stayed out until they'd cleared the grid, which was well after dark, and their temporary cover did not deign to return with them, radioing that he 'already had a ride.' Mac assumed that was back with his own team, and it was kind of a relief; outside of a few generic sarcastic remarks, Saber hadn't been overly aggressive, and Mac was glad to have gotten out of the assignment without an argument. He even closed his eyes for a couple minutes, figuring he'd earned the rest, and the next time he opened them it was because of rumble strips on approach to a base he didn't recognize.

Mac straightened in the seat, trying to get his bearings; he didn't even remember them leaving Sharan. "Where are we?"

"FOB Janabad. About five hours out from Delaram," Timmons supplied from the driver's seat. "We're rolling out at 0900 tomorrow. Got temporary barracks assigned."

'Temporary barracks' could mean a thin sleeping bag in a shitty tent, but it would be better than the 'vee and might come with a hot meal, so Mac just grunted as they followed a convoy of about a dozen vehicles through security and onto the base. They were directed to fleet parking, and from there to an administration tent where they reported in, were counted, and were then instructed to hit the DFAC, where a couple cooks were keeping a hot chow line open. Both the men behind the counter were friendly, and Mac got treated to some chocolate flavored decaf coffee, and a generous helping of beef stew that actually tasted like the real thing instead of Dinty Moore.

More importantly, he got a super high level layout of the FOB. And a confirmation that yes, they had a medical and surgical unit, and yes, they'd received casualties from the operation in Sharan.

There were only twenty or so men in the DFAC, most from Sharan, and none of them were familiar. Either the rest of Snakebite had returned to their normal FOB at a more reasonable hour, or part of his unit was still out there working. Timmons and Perugu seemed to sense that Mac wasn't going to quit until he got some information on his cover, and they bid him goodnight as soon as all three had been given a pillow, blanket, and a bunk assignment.

The admins were zero help; as soon as Mac returned to Administration, he was informed that no, they had no record of a Sgt Dalton, Jack Wyatt being transferred but that medical ran their own ship and visiting hours started at 0800 and he could check with them then. When he asked to speak with the nurse on call he was asked if he was injured. When he revealed that he was not, he was rather pointedly asked if he wanted an escort to his barracks, which drove home the message that admin wasn't interested in dealing with his ass tonight and he could willingly hit the rack, or he could meet the FOB MPs.

Blanket and pillow in hand, MacGyver politely declined armed escort and headed in the general direction of the barracks, which were a large collection of modular beige buildings that seemed to stretch out into the darkness as far as the eye could see. By design forward operating bases had well-lit perimeters, to prevent the enemy from sneaking up, but the interior of the base was not as brightly lit, and Mac had probably made it halfway down the long row before that feeling of unease, that had been quiet since Sharan, started ticking back up.

It was well past midnight and there were very few people milling around in the sub-freezing temperatures. The only other men, whom he'd been generally following, both took a sudden right into a tent Mac figured was the latrine, and then he was completely alone.

The hair on the back of his neck stood up, and MacGyver very carefully continued trudging down the road, just another exhausted soldier on his way for some well-deserved R&R.

He never heard them; a shadow materialized around the corner of one of the barracks in front of him and leaned casually against the wall, apparently unaffected by the cold, and as Mac passed under one of the few exterior spotlights along the path, a little dust puffed into view, as if someone had stopped walking just outside the circle of light.

Mac noted it, along with the exact position of the buildings and the number of strides it would take him to reach his four available exits. The guy leaning on the barrack wall didn't so much as twitch as Mac approached, it wasn't until he came even that the man casually spat something onto the ground.

His face wasn't familiar. His voice was. "You lost, son?"

Same Texas accent. Same drawl. Same sarcasm.

Mac glanced at the man but didn't break stride, not until a voice came out of the darkness just ahead. "Headed the wrong way, there, specialist."

Two exits down. Mac did stop, then, turning his head to the right to indicate he knew there was a third man, and sure enough, the puff of dust that he'd passed three meters ago piped up. "Hey, isn't that the genius that blew up his own overwatch to get him out of that building?"

He still had two clear exits, assuming there were only three men out there in the darkness. And he had a pillow and blanket. The pillow wasn't going to do him a damn bit of good, but the blanket was strong, quality cotton, and could easily deflect a knife. Mac tightened his grip slightly on the blanket, and addressed the only one of the three that he could clearly see.

"I'm not looking for trouble, guys. Can we do this in the morning?"

The man lounging against the barracks smirked.

"Not lookin' seems to be exactly his problem," the darkness in front of him observed to his colleagues, as if Mac couldn't hear him. "Kid probably overlooked the fuckin' bomb in the first place."

So that was a no. They couldn't do this in the morning.

Mac sighed, watching his breath steam in the artificial light, and then he dredged up a smirk of his own. "Three on one? And here Jack told me Delta fight fair."

The lounger gave a derisive snort. "The hell he did."

Mac gave him a little more of his attention. "Sounds like you know him pretty well."

"Better than you," the Texan snapped. "I've known Wyatt damn near all my life."

For a split second, he had a wild hope that this was all a terrible misunderstanding, and that they were talking about two different people, but Jack's middle name was Wyatt, and between that and the obvious Texas connection, it was just too coincidental.

"Kid clearly doesn't know him at all." That came from the shadows in front of him, and Mac finally realized that it truly _was_ a shadow when the outline of tan BDUs gradually became clear, but no face or hands accompanied them.

It was the African-American soldier who'd been staring him down. He wasn't a Ranger. He was another Delta.

Behind him, the puff of dust tutted disappointedly, and Mac decided enough was enough, and he took two steps towards the lounger. "I know him well enough," he said calmly. "I know that he would have suffocated in that rubble long before the AO was cleared and equipment could be brought in. I know I'm facing a reprimand for disobeying an order to leave him in there. And I know that after I put _you_ in the infirmary, base commander will finally give me a sitrep on his condition. I've had a long day, so if it's all the same to you, let's get started."

The Texan's eyebrows raised in amusement, and the shadow in front of Mac straight up laughed, in a very infectious, Bozer-like way. "I don't think he knows who you are."

"I don't think he cares," Mac replied evenly. If the fight was inevitable, he'd rather get it over with. Maybe Admin had dispatched the MPs anyway, and he'd get an eleventh hour save, but he wasn't counting on it. They might take a pound of flesh, but they weren't going to kill him. Probably. A single beating he could take. Backing down, not so much.

In the end, Charlie was right. Sitting and waiting was not an option. Especially not today, not on an anniversary like that. He did the best he could with what he had, and if he was hearing these men right, they were referring to Jack in the present tense.

Meaning he was still alive. And not only that, they had information that he didn't.

And he _had_ managed to pin Jack when they met. Probably because Jack had underestimated him, like most jocks did, and he could and would use it. He didn't plan to fight any more fairly than they did.

"Well, he should," the Texan grunted, reaching into the pocket of his BDUs. "Seein' as this ain't the first time we've met."

Mac barely processed the words before he heard footsteps, and another shape materialized out of the dark, just behind the Texan. "Guys, what's the holdup, the corporal said he checked onto base over an hour ago-" The voice cut itself off, but something about it was familiar was well, and the Texan rolled his eyes and pulled his hand out of his pocket.

Something metallic and cylindrical came out with it, and sure enough, it was tossed right at him. But it wasn't thrown hard; it was underhanded almost gently. They were too close for it to be an explosive or tear gas, and Mac hesitated too long to dodge. In the end, he caught it, intending to throw it right back.

The shape and weight of it, however, were way too familiar, and Mac opened his hand to find himself holding a can of beer.

He blinked at it, not understanding, and then looked back up at the Texan. ". . . you want me to drink you under the table?"

This time the puff of dust joined in with the shadow in his laughing, and the fourth man finally reached the circle of light. He was reasonably sized - in comparison with both of his more muscular friends - and he glanced at all the men with open confusion. After a few seconds, his expression closed up like a disappointed librarian.

"You were fucking with him." It wasn't a question.

The African-American Delta actually had to grab his knees, he was laughing so hard, and the Texan wore a gracious smirk. "Son," he said, in the exact same drawl he'd been using the entire time, "if the two of us sat down to drink, it'd be real alcohol, and you'd wake up three days later in the infirmary."

The fourth man finally broke into a smile, and weirdly, it was his teeth that jogged the memory. A memory of being in the dark, being surrounded by strangers that he feared, being confused and in pain and unsure what was happening.

It all clicked into place. The smile, the New York accent, the Texan drawl. "You were the medic," Mac said aloud, and then he turned and glanced behind him, hoping to get a glimpse of whoever had kicked up that puff of dust.

Sure enough, he'd approached. All seven feet of him.

The giant Afghan who wasn't an Afghan.

This was Jack's old Delta unit. The same ready reaction force that had come to get him out of that cave when their helo was downed north of Kabul, and he'd almost bled to death trying to fix the stupid radio.

"Ding ding ding," the Texan confirmed. "He really does have a brain."

The medic heaved an exaggerated sigh. "Sorry," he said, and then approached, offering a hand. "Boxer's got a bit of a protective streak when it comes to Jack. The name's Pete."

Still not entirely sure what was going on, Mac transferred the unopened beer to his left hand, and cautiously shook the medic's hand. His grip was strong but not overly so; it was truly a friendly gesture. 'Pete' seemed to catch on to his wariness, because his grin broadened. "Best drink that before you hit Jack's room," he murmured conspiratorially, nodding to the beer. "Otherwise he'll be pissed you didn't bring him one."

"And if you're old enough to die for your country –"

"Then you're old enough to have a beer," the shadow finished, pulling a can out of his own tac pants. "Name's Duncan. Folks call me Dunc. The redwood back there is Coop."

A little bemused, Mac gave him a stilted nod, and turned to take in the giant behind him. The blond gave him an easy smile.

"So Jack's . . . here," Mac guessed, and the medic raised his beer – that had appeared from apparently thin air – and took a swig.

"The ornery old SOB? Yeah. Well, he's in medical. But he's fine." It was the Texan – Boxer, apparently - who finally pushed himself off the barracks wall to join their little circle. He'd freed a second beer from his other pocket. "Just pissed off you haven't been by to see him yet. Sent us out to find ya, said you'd be cringing around like a kicked puppy." The man paused. "And then he said something about . . . abusin' paper clips . . ."

"The old timers get the good stuff," Pete murmured knowledgeably. When Mac didn't immediately smile or joke, the medic took pity on him. "He's got a pretty wicked concussion, a bruised kidney, and a four inch laceration above his left eye, but otherwise he's his usual self. Little hypoxia there at the beginning, but no lasting damage."

"Not that you'd really be able to tell," Dunc quipped, and Boxer shot him a dark look before grudgingly agreeing with him.

Pete ignored the banter in the longsuffering way of a man very used to it. "He'll be fine, MacGyver. Honestly, when we heard the sitrep, today of all days . . . and then once we got on site . . . I really thought it'd be a hell of a lot worse."

So they knew. Knew that it was the anniversary of Jack's father's death, knew how superstitious he was. And of course they would have, Mac had heard plenty of stories about Jack's Delta team, he knew how long they'd all served together. And now he could see, had seen, how they responded. They'd already been out on an op and instead of coming home, they'd redirected to Sharan and jumped into the shit without a second thought.

And it made all the difference. Jack was alive. Better than alive, he was going to be fine. Mac found himself pulling the beer tab on autopilot and letting it foam out. He'd spent all day thinking the worst, and somehow knowing that Jack was going to be all right –

"So did I," he admitted.

"So you didn't. Know what you were doing," Dunc expounded, and Mac grimaced and took a sip of the beer, more to buy himself time than because he really wanted it. Although, alcohol was a depressant, and he was still far too adrenaline-fueled to even think about sleeping. Maybe a little self-medication wouldn't hurt.

"I knew the concussion from the blast was a factor, but we'd already calculated that he had at least sixteen cubic feet of space, because he was still conscious and at this elevation he'd need about three liters of air a minute . . ." Mac trailed off as he realized none of them cared. "I knew we'd get him out. I just didn't know how injured he'd been by the initial collapse."

Or whether said injuries had been exacerbated getting him out. Or how in the hell he'd missed the bomb that had caused it in the first place.

The men around him sobered a little. "Yeah. At least Lancer got that sonnuvabitch," Dunc growled. On Mac's other side, Coop snorted.

"If the major hadn't, I would've. He was headed my way."

Mac looked between them. "The bomber?" The way Duncan had said it, Mac doubted the man had been taken alive. And until they did the post blast, he couldn't be sure, but he didn't think this guy had been the Ghost. The bombs were too straight-forward. The design was smart, but they were just too simple.

And maybe it was wrong, but knowing that the man had been stopped, even if they couldn't question him, was a relief. And a tiny, vengeful part of him felt like it was exactly what the asshole deserved. The bombs might not have been on the Ghost's level, but the cruelty in their design and placement sure as hell was. The world could sleep more peacefully knowing a man like that was no longer in it.

"Yeah. Confirmed by satellite a couple hours ago." The other men turned in unison to look accusingly at Pete, who shrugged. "What? One of my buddies is working the TOC tonight. He went in wearing a blue coat, came out without it, and they had enough footage to trace his route through the city. Lancer got the right guy."

Mac parsed through that in his head. "He went in . . . to the building that was bombed?"

"Yeah. After you cleared it and Dalton took up position," Pete confirmed, like he hadn't just dropped a bomb of his own. "Apparently he sweet-talked his way in past ground security, said he was a resident that came back to get his cat."

On Mac's left, Boxer snorted. "See, that's why dogs are better."

Dunc gave the older Texan a look that said he clearly did not agree, at least with the logic of that statement – but the medic wasn't as easily distracted, and didn't miss the expression that must have crossed Mac's face. "Relax, specialist. You didn't miss anything, and neither did Jack. EOD clears a building, a local goes in, comes out without his coat, not ten minutes later that building comes down . . . even Box there can do that math."

"Har har."

Pete shot him a shit-eating grin. "Rumint's that he mighta been the SOB that's been taking out a lot of ours lately."

Mac frowned and took another swig of beer. "If your rumint's that he was the Ghost, they're wrong."

Duncan gave him a long look. "And you'd know?"

"Yeah," Mac told him. "I would."

The men were quiet for a moment. Then the tallest of them shrugged. He was so large, and his uniform was so big, that it was actually an audible event. "Well I don't doubt it, you were doin' freakin' calculus while taking sniper fire –"

"Mathematical physics," Mac corrected him purely on reflex, and this time the exasperated look came from the Texan.

"Wyatt told us you're an argumentative little shit. And you have zero radio discipline, by the way. Like none."

Knowing Boxer had been the sniper assigned to his team, something occurred to Mac. "Were you the one that took out that shooter?"

Pete glanced at Boxer in alarm, but it was Duncan who smirked. "Nah, that was me. Never trust a Ranger to cover you."

And there was that friendly competition again. Mac raised his beer can to the man. "Noted. And thanks."

Duncan inclined his head with an exaggerated bow.

"Well, whatever fucking math it was, if you hadn't'a gone out there and done it, we'd be havin' a real different toast right now," Boxer observed, in a more solemn voice. "To Jack Dalton."

Everyone – Mac included – raised their can. "To Jack!"

Despite the cold and his nerves, the beer was starting to taste good, and Mac decided to push his luck a little. "Guess that's two I owe you now."

"Oh, right, that wasn't all that long ago, was it. You seem okay." Without warning, Coop gave him a friendly swat to the chest, right over the freshly healed scar. He was a big dude and Mac hadn't been expecting it; he stumbled back a step, but managed to keep the yelp to himself. The medic gave him a knowing look.

"It's probably gonna be tender a while longer. We were actually a little worried about you there for a minute, when you weren't too keen on waking up."

"You had ol' Jack pacing like a mother hen," Dunc agreed. "Actually had the nurse wound up too."

Try as he might, Mac couldn't summon a single memory of any of them after he'd been loaded into the belo. "You were at the hospital?"

"Oh yeah," Coop told him. "That was a messy op, we had a couple friends end up in there with you. We came down to find Jack about to crawl outta his skin, said you wouldn't come around and the docs didn't know why –"

"Until you opened your eyes and glared at us, and told us to – how'd he put it?"

"I think it was, shut the hell up?"

"Sounds right," Pete agreed placidly. "So you told us to shut the hell up, and then you turned over and went back to sleep. After that, we knew you'd be just fine."

Mac cleared his throat, then decided another swig of beer was in order. "Well, I don't remember that, but I'm sorry. And since I didn't get the chance to say it before - thank you."

Pete chuckled. "Don't worry about it. And don't worry about that marker either. I think you made good on it by keepin' Jack on the right side of the ground today."

"Yeah, no shit," Boxer agreed. "And forget dodgin' sniper fire. Would you believe I watched this lunatic crawl inside a bomb? And after he disassembled the whole damn car from the inside, up he goes into the back seat to have him some me time."

Mac had already opened his mouth to protest when he realized it was a joke, and he nimbly redirected. "Hey, I've made some good memories in the back of a Corolla."

That got a few appreciative whoops from the men, and a barely audible grumble from one of the barracks.

"Alright, fellas, finish up those beers and let America's finest get some shuteye. Otherwise Wyatt's liable to get up and try to find the kid himself."

Mac obediently tipped the can empty, and took his cue from the other can-crushing grunts, collapsing the aluminum cylinder and sticking it in one of the pockets of his BDUs to be quietly disposed of later. He shifted the pillow and blanket under his arm and nodded farewell, and Dunc gave him a confused look.

"Seriously, dude, wrong way." He thumbed over his shoulder in the direction Pete and Boxer had come from. "Infirmary's on the east side."

The information was not new, he'd gotten that from the cooks on the line, but it still didn't click. "Visiting hours start at 0800 –"

A guffaw sounded behind him. "Visiting hours? That's cute." Then a massive hand pushed him forward a few steps. "Jack asked to see you, and he's gonna see you."

Mac caught himself a little more gracefully this time, and fell in line with the men as they circled around the barracks Boxer had been leaning against. Clearly their medic had an in not only with the TOC, but also with the infirmary. Still, he was lucky enough not to have gotten an ass chewing when he checked in; breaking base protocol on top of disobeying an order -

Pete seemed to sense his hesitation. "Jack's got himself a one track mind when it comes to family," he explained, in that easy manner of his. "Pretty sure the last thing he heard was all the automatic fire. He's got it in his head we let you get shot, and just won't admit it."

"Oh yeah. And I even put Dunc on the ground, just in case," Boxer called over his shoulder. "Wyatt'd have my hide if you wound up dead. We sure as hell didn't carry your ass all over that mountain to let you get picked off on a little ol' hill."

"No matter how much you were beggin' for it," Coop added, from behind him. "Didn't anyone teach you how to take cover?"

"Or that you should never count on a Ranger to cover you?"

"I think we already . . . _covered_ it," Dunc added mischievously, waggling his eyebrows.

Coop groaned. Loudly. "Ah, jesus, we're doin' puns now?"

"Son, we're always doing puns. And that was word play, not puns. Repetition makes it funnier."

The good-natured ribbing kept up all the way to what Mac concluded was the infirmary. It was a pair of portable buildings screwed together, connected to a like pair via a fully enclosed walkway, and it was this covered walkway that the Delta operators led him to. Though it wasn't readily visible in the dark, there was in fact a zippered entrance in the thick plastic, and Pete wasted no time in unzipping it.

Despite the size of the men, they moved eerily silently; there wasn't so much as a floor creak as they smoothly penetrated the portable, and Mac found himself quickly led to one of the larger rooms, where three men were lined up in narrow hospital beds, separated only by hanging sheets. It was there that their luck ran out; a nurse was in there charting, and Duncan, who was now in the lead, froze in his tracks and held up his right fist in the universal symbol for 'stop.'

But it was too late. She turned to check the saline drip and no matter how quiet they were, they were not invisible. The woman was a dwarf in comparison to the operators, but Mac didn't miss how they all seemed to shrink a little as she glared at them.

"Out." She punctuated the order with a single finger, pointing right at the door.

"TROBA," Dunc stage whispered, and the glare shifted directly to him.

Pete stepped forward and cleared his throat. "Binkie," he said, and gestured to Mac.

The full weight of the nurse's ire then fell on him, and Mac added it to his own and deflected it towards the medic, who flashed him an apologetic smile. Which Pete then turned full beam back on the nurse. "Look, you want Dalton to settle down . . . binkie."

Mac looked between the two of them, but it was a gravelly voice from one of the beds that ended the stalemate. "I'll settle down . . . when one of you asses . . . gives it to me straight."

He didn't sound much better than he had over the radio, and Mac hesitated, then sidestepped Coop and peered around the third curtain.

Jack didn't _look_ much better than he had earlier, either. His face had been cleaned up, but the stitches over his eye were readily apparent, as it was swollen half-shut. There were plenty of bruises visible as well, on his face and exposed arms. But then that face split into a goofy grin, and somehow it didn't seem so bad.

"Hey, bud! I was worried 'bout ya," he declared, almost giddily, and then moved to throw back his sheets and get up.

The nurse and the medic pounced, preventing any unauthorized walkabout, and then Boxer intervened and shoved Mac directly into line of sight. There was nowhere to sit, so Mac took up a position beside one of the monitoring stands, near the head of the bed, and Jack reached out and snagged his sleeve.

"Y'okay?" he asked, the words slightly slurred. Without waiting for an answer, he tried to tug him closer for a more thorough inspection. "No new holes in ya?"

"I'm good," he assured his cover, holding up his hands. "Your team took good care of me."

It seemed to reassure the sniper; he stopped flailing as much, and on the opposite side of the bed, the nurse was able to tuck Jack back in. She'd also noticed the change in her patient, and as Jack eased himself back down on the mattress, as if suddenly becoming aware of how sore he was, she thinned her lips.

"Five minutes," she finally relented. " _Five_."

"Ma'am yes ma'am," Coop agreed, without the slightest sarcasm, and the nurse gave them all another warning look before she reclaimed her clipboard.

"Y' . . . y'r hands . . ."

Mac turned them, realizing that after he'd washed them at the DFAC, he hadn't bothered with bandaids. They were a little cut up, but nothing major. "Scratched them up a little getting you out," he admitted. "You know how much I hate gloves."

Jack barked out a laugh. "Boy do I ever." His head rolled a little dizzily on his pillow, inviting the other men into the conversation. "This idiot'll be in full battle rattle and bare fuckin' hands."

"Dude. Head, eye, and hand protection. Don't they teach EOD _anything?_ " There was a playful twinkle in Dunc's eyes, and Coop nudged the man hard in the ribs.

"Not helping," he muttered in an undertone.

"'Zactly," Jack agreed heartily, as if Coop hadn't spoken, and then relaxed even deeper into the mattress, wrinkling his nose as the nasal cannula tickled it. "Been sayin' that all damn tour."

"Yeah, he pretty much has," Mac agreed readily. "How you feeling, big guy? They taking good care of you?"

"Oh yeah. 'Cept they'll let damn near any riffraff in here . . . haven't gotten a wink a'sleep . . ." He punctuated that statement with a wide yawn, and Mac gave him an easy grin.

"Yeah, I'm sure that wasn't self-inflicted at all." He made a show of checking his watch. "It's pretty late. Why don't you get some shuteye, and we'll all come back during visiting hours." It was a promise he could actually make. His orders weren't to leave the FOB until 0900, and he'd spend that last hour with Jack if the man wanted him to.

On Jack's opposite side, Boxer snorted. "This one's a real stickler for the rules. Figured you'd have broken him of that by now, Wyatt. You're gettin' slow in your old age."

"Well, the kid _did_ disobey a direct order," Pete pointed out reasonably, and when Jack raised an eyebrow, Mac smirked.

"Three, actually. But one came from Lancer, so it doesn't really count."

That got a round of chuckles from the entire room, his overwatch included, and Mac reached down and patted him gently on the shoulder. "Get some rest, man. See you in the morning."

His sleeve was caught again, with more speed than Mac would have thought Jack capable of. "Jus' – jus' a sec." Then he looked around the room, and frowned. "Okay, _fine_ , you didn' let him get dead," he admitted reluctantly. As if it had been a hot topic of conversation earlier in the day. "I jus' need a word with 'im."

"That's all we get?" Pete deadpanned. "Six hours of swearing on a Bible, and it's we 'didn't let him get dead'?"

Jack released Mac's sleeve and made a shooing gesture. "Whatever. Beat it."

There was a little more grumbling, but then the operators disappeared as silently as they'd arrived, and Mac raised an eyebrow when Jack simply lay there and stared at him. "What?"

Jack's eyebrows knit together. "What?" he echoed, with significantly less slurring. "Don't you what me. You know what." When Mac continued giving him a blank look, his cover sighed, and suddenly looked very, very tired.

"You let me go on and on about my parents, growin' up back in Texas, family reunions . . . why didn't you tell me?"

It wasn't the kind of conversation he could have in the thirty seconds before the nurse came back to chase him out, and Mac let his smile turn a little self-deprecating. "You heard."

"Damn right I heard," Jack shot back. "Every word. Along with every damn bullet goin' by. That was stupid, Angus. That was downright _reckless_."

"That was the deal," Mac reminded him. "We walk into a situation together, we walk out together." The sniper glared at him, and Mac gave him an eloquent shrug. "And I meant what I said. If you want to talk about your father, I'm all ears."

"Pops is not what I wanna talk about," Jack snapped, but he cut himself off with a grimace, and Mac winced with him and stood by helplessly while his cover fought with his pain.

"Jack, settle down. We don't have to talk about any of it tonight. Well, I mean, I might be court-marshalled in the morning, but -"

"Pfft." Jack looked like he was rolling his eyes, but Mac suspected it was the dizziness from his concussion kicking back up. "They won't do nothin' to ya. Skill set's too valuable."

It gave Mac a reason to genuinely smile – and not just because his redirection had worked. "Funny, someone else told me the same thing."

"Yeah, well, whoever it was is smarter than you," Jack countered, still sounding cross. "Mac . . . you can't wait to share the important shit until you think somebody's dyin'. I mean it," he overrode Mac's half-hearted attempt to interrupt. "You only told me about your parents because you thought I was gonna bite it."

"No. I told you about my parents because _you_ thought you were going to bite it," Mac corrected him. "I needed you focused on something besides the dark, the pain, and today's date. I needed you to have a reason to take one more breath. And if that something's a – a sob story, well at least it did _someone_ some good."

It wasn't exactly what he meant to say, and the phrasing was terrible, but it seemed to sink in, because Jack blinked up at him like a man who'd suddenly been struck by an epiphany.

Mac hoped it was the pharmaceutical kind. "Now, my five minutes are up, and I don't want to get into the kind of trouble that my skill set can't get me out of, so I will see you tomorrow morning, during visitor hours. You really should get some rest, Jack. You look like shit."

"It wasn't your fault," Jack said suddenly.

Mac swallowed a sigh. "Yeah, big guy, I know. The bomber snuck into the building after I cleared it –"

Jack raised his hand to silence him. "Whatever you're blamin' yourself for, right now? Wasn't your fault."

It was scary how well his cover could read him sometimes. Mac got ready to head for the door. "Go to sleep, Jack."

"Hey!" The sharpness of his tone brought Mac up short, as did the suddenly stone cold sober expression on Dalton's face. "I will _never_ check out on you, Mac. _Never_. Not if I have any say in the matter, and maybe even if I don't." Only after he leaned back against the pillows did Mac realize that Jack had sat straight up in the bed. Even after he settled back, his voice lost none of its fierceness. "I'm sorry if I scared ya, bud, but I don't plan on buggin' out anytime soon. That's a Jack Dalton promise, and you can _count_ on it."

Mac nodded. "Yeah, big guy. I know."

"Not yet you don't," he growled. "Angus, you don't gotta _give_ me a reason to stick around, not ever. _You_ _are_ the reason. That's all the reason any decent human being needs." He paused to let that sink it. "And I will spend the rest of my damn life showin' you what that looks like if that's what it takes."

Mac wasn't quite sure what he was supposed to say to that. Just like he hadn't known how to take it when Pete, the medic, had said that Jack considered him 'family.' They'd only been paired together a year, and he couldn't even say he liked Jack for all of it. It couldn't compare to the bond those Delta had with him, all that time, the ops and close calls. It just couldn't, from both a neurological and psychological perspective, and –

And if he thought about that too long, he might eventually concede that, at least to him, Jack _felt_ like family. Felt like someone he didn't want to lose.

And it was the end of a really long day, and the dropping off point of copious amounts of adrenaline and stress hormones, and it was something that needed to be dealt with tomorrow. And if he said all that out loud, he'd sound like a dismissive asshole, so he was right back to square one – unsure what to say.

And as usual, his overwatch filled in the silence. "And before you go rack out, I got one last thing I gotta say. The only reason I got some more life left is because of you, and what you did today." Jack sobered a little. "Thanks, man."

That, at least, he knew how to respond to. "Any time."

"But it was stupid. And reckless," Jack repeated.

Mac shook his head with a smile, and there was finally a little glimmer of humor in Jack's eyes as he held out his fist. Mac obediently gave it a solid bump.

"Goodnight, Jack."

"Yeah. Goodnight."

-M-

FIN

-M-

For those of you wondering why there's an entire fictional Delta team in this story when there's a perfectly good one in canon, the **Turkey Day** stories were written before that episode aired, and well before that ep, I came across these characters, who were being written by the very talented **Gib** and **MarenMary93** , and they were nice enough to let me play with them, so they became canon to the **Turkey Day** universe.

This came about for two reasons: one, it's a present for author **Gib** , who made a couple requests that boiled down into "The first time Mac fucks up a bomb disposal" and "The first time Mac learns how to handle an injured Jack." I also wanted a situation that mirrored what happened to Mac in Just Desserts, where Mac was the one who had to carry on when it looked like Jack was a goner. I felt like Jack would need that little push to keep his eye on the ball with both Mac and Riley in ambulances.

As I was thinking through Gib's prompts, I realized that A. it's very hard to write Mac fucking up a bomb disposal, and B. it's very easy to handle an injured Jack. He's a soldier. But he's also got a much healthier relationship with his emotions, and so I thought the challenge for Mac would be navigating that, and trying to help Jack when he was hurting emotionally, not just physically. I also figure there had to be a few key conversations – or 'moments of truth' – that furthered Mac and Jack's friendship to the absolute trust they have in the show.

We had a few firsts to get out of the way in this one:

  * The first time Mac tells Jack about his parental situation
  * The first time Mac thinks he's lost Jack
  * The first time Mac realizes that Jack considers him family
  * The first time Mac realizes that Mac considers Jack family



**Gib** , I hope this is what you had in mind, and of course I couldn't help but throw your boys in there a bit. Most of their dialogue was approved by **MarenMary93** about a million years ago. Hope I did them justice!


	9. Potato Chips

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

 **Content Warning** : Lots of violence and language, moderate tearjerk warning, but it's got a fluffy ending, I swear.

-M-

**BUDAPEST, HUNGARY**

The rattling of the chain link captured his attention, and Jack Dalton rolled his head in the direction of the sound. Just his head; the rest of him felt distant and tingly, and he knew if he concentrated on any of it he'd start to hurt again. So he remained relaxed, at one with the concrete he was plastered to, as a too-familiar figure in khakis, hand restraints, and a blindfold was shoved into his line of sight.

Mac was still walking, though. Still in one piece. They'd roughed him up some, he could see bruises beneath the filthy rag tied around his head, red marks on his neck before his torn up button-up blocked the view, and Jack felt a weak burst of protective fury. He didn't have the energy to kindle those sparks into anything more, and then the blindfold was ripped off, and Mac was blinking at his surroundings.

Those searching eyes fell on him, and Mac's expression went instantly blank. And Jack knew.

He kind of knew anyway, knew he was dying. Knew he'd put up a fight, though he could no longer remember the particulars. The chain link gate crashed shut behind Mac, but he didn't pay any attention to it, he just hurried over and knelt beside him, his bound hands hovering without seeming to know where to touch.

"Hey, big guy." His voice was calm and steady, and it made tears prick Jack's eyes.

 _Ah, shit, bud. You don't gotta pretend for me_. But he couldn't quite find the strength to open his mouth and say it. All that came out was a strangled grunt.

Mac gave him a ghost of a smile, and apparently made up his mind about the most critical injury, because he pressed the rag that had once been his blindfold to Jack's chest. He felt the pressure, in a vague kind of way, but not much pain. Swallowing was difficult, but he tried it anyway.

". . . y'okay?" It still sounded stifled to his ears, but Mac translated it, and gave him a nod.

"Yeah, Jack, we're okay. I could only buy a couple minutes, so I just gotta . . ." His eyes were everywhere, searching Jack's body, then the cell for anything he could use, and Jack risked the pain to flop his nerveless left hand against Mac's leg. It netted him one hundred percent of that intense focus, that Mac got when he was deep in problem-solving mode.

Jack shook his head lazily at his partner. _You and I both know there's nothin' you can do._

Mac's lips thinned, and a muscle slid beneath the skin of his jaw. "Deeper breaths if you can . . . don't try to talk."

As if. Jack hoped he managed a grin. " . . . Riley . . .?"

Mac nodded to him again, apparently pressing harder on his rag. All Jack felt was that the pressure shifted his body a little. "Diversion worked, she got clear," Mac told him, his voice quieter, and a little husky. "She'll have the cavalry here before you know it. Just hang on for me, okay?"

Riley was safe. Riley would get them help. " . . . 'n' . . . Boze . . .?"

A breathy scoff. "He's fine. Looks like you got the worst of it, tough guy."

" . . . good . . ." That was good. That was the plan, was always the plan. He lost his partner's eyes, then, back to roving the eight by eight square of empty concrete and chain link fence for anything he could use. He knew it was killing Mac, as surely as it was killing him, and he twitched his fingers again.

Mac refocused on him, and those thin lips turned up a little in a smile. "Thank you, for always keeping us safe. We're gonna be okay."

He wasn't too sure he believed him, but it was nice to hear.

"Jack?"

Try as he might, he just couldn't get his fingers to move anymore. Couldn't get his tongue to move either.

The calm, confident façade his partner was projecting cracked; he barely felt Mac put a hand on his throat, seeking a pulse. But even after he knew his heart stopped, his eyes kept working. He saw the moment that Mac knew, watched his smile widen until it was painful, watched his eyes crinkle as he fought to keep his composure. He couldn't; in the end, a couple tears slipped through, and Mac quickly dashed them away with the back of his bloody hand.

It was his blood, not Mac's. His blood on Mac's hand.

Jack watched him, and silently wept with him as his partner struggled to keep his shit together. Mac's blood-stained hands moved to hover over Jack's face, as if to close his eyes, but even after those skinny fingers passed gently over his eyelids, Jack could still somehow see. Footsteps were approaching from outside the chain link, and Mac quickly wiped his face again. He couldn't let them see how badly they'd just hurt him. Couldn't. If they knew that was how to get him to crack, they'd start on Boze next -

_It's okay, Mac. You got this. You just gotta hang on 'til Riley brings the hurt._

And if he knew his girl, she would. She would rain down hell on these men.

"Thank you, Jack," he whispered. "For everything."

 _Ah, Mac_. Even though he knew his eyes were closed, he could feel them watering. _I'm just sorry as hell I couldn't stay with ya longer, brother. This wasn't your fault._

He knew Mac couldn't hear him, but his partner swallowed, and visibly gathered himself as the gate rattled and the lock was opened. Only someone who knew him well could see how devastated he was, and the cold rage that took its place in his eyes was actually a little frightening.

_Mac . . . uh . . . whatever you're thinkin', dude, don't do it . . ._

The gate was finally thrown open, and Mac turned, just his head, and glared at them over his shoulder. But he didn't say a word.

The dark-haired Romanian who had entered the cell sneered. "There. You got your goodbye, American. Now give me that flash drive."

Jack looked between the two of them in confusion, that didn't abate even as Mac rose smoothly to his feet. The Romanian raised his gun, and Jack could see that Mac was just slightly too far away to get hold of it before it'd go off, and he'd get hit. And maybe Mac knew it, even through his rage, because he didn't lunge for it like Jack was afraid he would. Instead, his fisted hands twisted in their restraints, testing them again.

"It's in a red Captain America lunch pail, under some bushes outside the consulate," he finally said, his voice eerily flat.

If Jack wasn't already dead, his jaw would have dropped. That was . . . correct. The flash drive with all the intel on the gun runners _was_ in a red Captain America lunch pail, that they'd chucked out the window as they hurtled past the consulate in that piece of shit van. Boze had been aiming to get it over the fence, but apparently it hadn't quite made it.

And Mac had just _told_ those fuckers. These assholes had just fucking _killed_ him, and Mac just – just rolled over?

The sneer grew wider. "Oh really. Maybe it is. Maybe I believe you. Or maybe . . . I don't." The gunshot was loud, the room was concrete after all and damn echoey, and Jack watched helplessly as Mac flinched, then brought his bound hands to his own gut. He only kept his feet another few seconds, stumbling to his knees, and the Romanian cocked his head to the side, oozing false sympathy as Mac inhaled a shaking breath.

"If it is there, I'll come back and end your pain quickly. If it's not . . . ask your friend what will happen." With that horribly cliché threat still ringing in the air, the two men stepped out of the chain link pen, securing the gate before hurrying back out of the basement door to claim their prize.

Jack couldn't give less of a shit about them. All his attention was on his partner. Mac rolled himself onto his back with a groan, pressing an already blood-soaked rag against his own stomach, and pulled up his knees. Trying to staunch the bleeding and prevent himself from going into shock. He had no belt, no socks, no shoes – nothing he could use to really put pressure on it, and his face contorted as he tried to shove the rag as far into the wound as he could.

_Oh, bud. Why'd you do that? Why'd you tell 'em?_

The seconds ticked by like hours, and all Jack could do was lay there, dead as a doornail, and listen to Mac trying to breathe through clenched teeth. The pain came in waves, and his long legs shifted restlessly as he fought with it. Eventually he pried open quickly glazing eyes, once again futilely searching the room for something, anything to help himself, and he locked eyes with Jack.

Jack grimaced in sympathy. _I'm here, dude, I'm right here. Just hang on, Riley'll get back in time. You keep breathin', just like you're doin'._

But Mac couldn't hear him, and after staring at him a few seconds, turned his face away, with a new kind of pain written all over it.

They stayed like that, one dead, one dying, for what seemed an eternity. Mac went in and out but never managed to stay unconscious for long. The cold sweat and shivers got him next, his breaths were uneven and too fast, but he just couldn't seem to slow them down. No blood had gathered beneath him, meaning the slug was still in there, and Jack knew what that meant as surely as Mac did.

He needed a doctor, and he needed one now, or he wasn't going to make it.

The basement door was finally thrown open, but Jack didn't pay them any attention, not until they were back in the cell with them. The Romanian stalked inside and dealt Mac a vicious kick to the side, and Jack's bellow of rage almost blotted out Mac's shout of pain.

"It's encrypted!" the lowlife snarled, and kicked Mac again, hard enough to roll him towards Jack. The agony on Mac's face was unbearable, and Jack wished he'd just black out. They'd stop whaling on him if he just passed out.

_Ri, baby, you gotta get here, an' I mean right now!_

"You will give us the password! Do it now!"

Mac managed to get his eyes open, and his tremulous smile was vicious, even as he panted through the pain. "Not . . . until you let . . . them go."

The Romanian answered with a wordless screech of rage, winding up to kick him again, and his buddy pulled him back. "You'll kill him-"

Mac grimaced and made a concerted effort to slow down his breathing, and Jack finally processed what he'd said. Them. Let _them_ go.

Not let _him_ go. If it was just Bozer, it would have been him. But he said 'them.'

"I'm the only one . . . who can decrypt that drive . . . an' I think you can tell . . . by looking at me that . . . you don't have a lotta time . . . so . . . what's it gonna be?"

The arms dealer glared with undisguised hatred at Mac, but MacGyver didn't back down, even when a tremor ran along his spine from head to toe. It seemed to spur the lowlife into action; with a string of what Jack assumed were curses, he stormed back out of the pen, leaving his lieutenant scrambling to re-lock the gate.

Like Mac could stand up and walk out if his life depended on it.

The moment the basement door slammed shut Mac dropped the act, and his head, back to the concrete. His unsteady breathing got worse, and there was pain on every exhale.

Jack would have been shaking with rage if he'd been able. _I'm right here, man. You're not alone. Just hang on. She's comin'._

Hell, he could practically hear her, growling threats under her breath. It wasn't until Mac tried to pick his head back up and look at the basement door that Jack realized he could hear her, too. And sure enough, that door opened and Riley tripped into the basement, her hands bound in front of her like Mac's were. There was a little blood on her mouth, like someone had hit her, but she wasn't limping, and there wasn't a trace of fear on her face. Not until she looked at the chain link cage and saw who was inside it.

"Mac . . . _Jack_!"

Their Romanian friend was right behind her, urging her forward using the barrel of his .45, and his goon followed up, closing the door behind him. Mac let his head fall back to the concrete again, apparently unable to hold it up any longer, and he gasped quickly, twice, and then he spoke.

"She doesn't . . . know the password . . ."

After blurting out their names, Riley couldn't seem to speak. Her mouth was half open, her eyes darting between them, and then they landed on Jack and stayed there, and he watched her figure it out, just like Mac had. Watched her eyes flood with emotions, just like Mac's had. Watched her fight to keep the tears in her eyes where they belonged, just like Mac had.

And he would have done anything to soothe that pain. Anything. _Honey, I'm so sorry._ Mac must have been wrong about her getting away, or they'd re-captured her -

But . . . no. Mac had said _them._ He'd . . . he'd known they still had Riley. He'd known they still had Riley and Bozer both.

Jack blinked, looking between Riley and Mac, and a little shred of disbelief-tinged outrage started cutting through the hurt. Had . . . had Mac freakin' _lied_ to him? Right to his face? Lied to him on his _deathbed_?

Riley looked back at Mac in shock, and Jack growled, low in his throat, when she was shoved none too gently into the chain link while her captor undid the lock.

"Mac . . ." she tried again, and he grimaced, squeezing his eyes shut. His voice was still somehow steady when he replied.

"They go free . . . or you get nothing."

"He doesn't look so good, does he," the Romanian crooned into Riley's ear as his lieutenant finally got the lock opened, and the clang of the gate slamming into the fence made Riley jump a little. "If you want us to help him, you need to give us the password _now_ , while there's still time."

 _Dammit, Mac, are you_ kidding _me?! This was your plan?!_

Mac wasn't. He gave Riley an apologetic look, but it didn't stop him from forging ahead with said terrible plan. "Sorry Riles . . . I changed it . . . last field analyst kinda screwed us . . . I hadda make sure . . ."

Meaning Nikki. He was telling her to use Nikki as her excuse for whatever she'd already promised them. Of _course_ she knew she could decrypt the data, she'd been the one to encrypt it in the first place. Just like she knew Mac hadn't touched it. And she knew exactly what Mac was trying to do; buy her safety, hers and Boze both, and then be unable to deliver the goods no matter how much they tortured him.

Which wouldn't be very much, or very long. Jack wasn't actually sure, even if a bona fide ambulance pulled up right then, that Mac would pull through. And clearly he thought the same.

He thought he was going to die in this basement. Just like Jack had.

Jack moved his gaze back to Riley, who was clearly struggling with all the same realizations. That she'd lost Jack, that she was going to lose Mac. Her eyes cut to his, like she could see them, like she could see him looking at her, and her face crumpled, just a little.

It was asking a lot. Maybe too much.

The Romanian reached up a hand and tried to smooth back her hair, but she jerked her head away from his touch. Jack thought maybe she'd pay for that, but the guy didn't force it. "I promise you, we'll help him." It was soft and serious. And fucking bullshit. "We just want the guns, then you and your friend are free to take him to a doctor. But you gotta make up your mind fast, girlie. He's not going to last."

"Get your hands off me, you son of a bitch," she snarled, trying to push off the chain link, but it had too much give, and he'd planted her feet too close. He didn't let her go anywhere.

"Or you can stand here and watch him die, just like he watched his friend die. It's up to you."

"Let . . . her go," Mac growled, trying and failing to pick up his head again. "When they're . . . safe . . . when I can see them . . . safe . . . you'll . . . get your password."

Predictably, the Romanian's goon entered the cell, taking slow, deliberate steps towards where Mac was lying. Mac tracked him with his eyes, already knowing the play, already knowing how much it was going to suck. And not just for him. He looked back at Riley, with just the barest of head-shakes, before the goon tutted, and raised his foot to stomp Mac's abdomen.

" _Stop!_ Stop," she repeated frantically, and the goon did, letting his giant-ass boot hover over Mac, who'd tried to curl protectively over his wounded stomach.

"She doesn't know," he rushed out, much less steadily. "If you . . . put in the wrong code . . . data'll be wiped . . . permanently . . ."

"Is he right?" The Romanian dug the gun a little deeper into Riley's back, making her wince. She turned it into a snarl, but Jack could still see the indecision on her face.

And he knew. Even if Mac didn't. She wasn't going to be able to leave him to die.

And there was nothing he could do about it but watch.

" . . . help him. Then I'll help you," she finally ground out, and Mac made a noise that was probably supposed to be a laugh.

"You'll never . . . guess the phrase, Ri . . . I didn't . . . lie t'you about . . . where the drive was . . . an' . . . I'm not lying now . . ."

Jack had to give it to him, Mac was pretty convincing. The Romanian exchanged a look with his lieutenant, who was still balanced on one foot, still threatening a gut stomp, and Jack knew that if Mac could have, he would have used that to his advantage. Would have knocked the man off balance, given Riley an opportunity to take out her opponent. The fact that he didn't – that he couldn't - told Jack exactly how bad off he was. And probably told Riley the same thing.

"If he did change the password, can you still get in? _Without_ losing the data?"

Riley hesitated, then craned her neck, so that she could actually see the man behind her. "If you don't save him, I'll make sure _no one_ can recover that data."

In answer, the man jammed the gun hard into the small of her back, pressing her further into the chain link and making Jack bare his teeth. "If you do that, sweetheart . . . there's no reason to keep any of you around."

Reminding her that Bozer, probably, would be next on the list. Mac's plan had been the best option of shit options, it _might_ have worked to at least get Bozer and Riley out, and watching his face screw up with pain, Jack knew that he'd realized it was over. That Riley couldn't leave him, wouldn't leave him. She probably thought she could hold the data hostage, swap places with Mac, but it wasn't gonna go down like that. Any hope they'd had of getting her out alive had just evaporated.

Jack watched his brave little girl, his badass hacker, deflate just a little.

"Help him," she repeated quietly, "and I'll help you."

"Smart woman," the Romanian praised her. He even let her go and backed off, let her up off the chain link fence. Riley stared through it at Mac, the apology clear in her eyes, and Mac silently forgave her, and turned his attention to the man still in the cell with him.

So did the Romanian. "You heard the lady. Help the guy."

His goon smirked down at Mac and then very deliberately lowered his foot - without touching him. He exchanged a look with his boss, then gave him a nod, and backed out of the pen, reaching into the back of his pants as if to grab a cellphone, as if to call for help.

Jack watched Mac close his eyes and brace himself, and even though he was already dead, Jack tried to do the same.

_Bud, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry._

When the lieutenant got to the gate, he pulled out a nine mil, instead of a phone, and emptied the magazine into Mac.

This time Jack's shout blended with Riley's. After the fifth or sixth round hit him, Mac's body stopped flinching, stopped responding at all as bullet after bullet tore through him. When all fifteen rounds were fired, the silence that followed was suffocating, broken only by brass tinkling gently on the concrete, and Riley's ragged gasp.

Blood began to pond out from beneath Mac like someone had upended a bucket. His mouth was half open but he didn't make a sound; his head rolled in agony, and then he was gone.

Jack felt something in his chest seize, even though he knew it couldn't be his heart, and he tore his eyes away from Mac to watch Riley turn on the Romanian. But she didn't have a chance. He caught her as she swung her bound hands at him, spun her around, and put her in a bear hug from behind, one she couldn't break.

" _NO_! Get off me! You lying son of a bitch _, get off me_!"

"Shhh, shhh, what's the problem? I told you we'd help him and we did -"

Riley struggled like a wild thing, she damn near took him off his feet, but didn't quite have the weight. " _FUCK_ you! You fucking _shitstain_ , I'm gonna _kill_ you-"

"Hey, we saved him hours and hours of suffering. I'm sure he's very grateful." The Romanian's lieutenant swapped a fresh mag into his weapon and stepped fully out of the pen, this time not bothering with the gate or the lock. "Be a shame if we had to help your other friend the same way."

The Romanian and his goon muscled Riley back to the basement door, and Jack growled savage threats of his own as he listened to them slowly disappear up the stairs. No need to shut the basement door anymore. No one down there was gonna make a peep.

He was dead. Mac was dead. And Riley and Boze, inexperienced and with no backup –

Jack couldn't see a way out for them. For either of them.

He turned back to Mac as his partner's body settled, not making so much as a ripple in the lake of blood surrounding it, and Jack's fury burned away into sorrow in an instant. Mac's expression, even in death, told how much he'd suffered, how much of it he'd felt, and even though he knew it was impossible, and dead men couldn't cry, Jack couldn't swallow back his sobs.

_I'm sorry kid . . . Ri . . . Boze . . . god, I'm so sorry-_

Why? Why'd he have to watch that? What was the fucking point? Watch them all sufferin' when he couldn't lift a finger to stop it –

Mac let loose with a low groan, then slowly blinked his half-open eyes. ". . . well, _that_ sucked . . ."

Jack stared at him in complete and total shock, and Mac groaned again, then slowly pushed himself into a sitting position.

 _What . . . what the_ hell _. . . ?_

Without really thinking about it, Jack did the same, and found that he could. He was able to pick up his head, and lever himself up onto his elbows. Mac didn't seem to notice; he was too distracted by the sizable lake of blood around him, and he reached out in disbelief and touched his fingertips to it.

They came back clean. And the reason for that was still lying it in. Mac was sitting up, but his body was still right where it had fallen.

Jack heaved himself into a sitting position, then closed his eyes and muttered a quick prayer. _Hail Mary, full of grace, hallowed be thy name -_

" . . . Jack . . .?"

Unable to find another excuse to stall, Jack winced, then cracked his right eye open just a little, unwillingly looking behind himself. All he saw was a blurry shadow, and he immediately snapped the eye shut again.

He was doing the same thing Mac was. Sitting up, and leaving his body behind him.

_This cannot be happening. This is not happening. It's not, it's not, it's not -_

He heard Mac suddenly scramble to his feet, clearly becoming aware that he was also – well, dead - and Jack procrastinated a few moments more before he winced harder, then forced his eyes open.

Same picture as before. Except this time Mac was on his feet, hastily backing out of the bloody pool on the floor. Apart for the panic in his eyes, he looked –

Fine. He looked like he had when they'd brought him in, sans the bruises and red marks. Same pair of khakis, same button-up shirt.

No blood.

Jack bit the bullet – which was a terrible turn of phrase, now that he'd probably actually done that – and glanced down at his own chest, which was unmarked. His maroon muscle shirt was just as clean as Mac's.

"What . . . that –" Mac ran a hand through his hair, still staring down at his own body. "This is –" But then he took a slightly deeper breath. "A hallucination," he concluded, and weirdly, he actually sounded relieved. "Random brain cells firing as hypoxia sets in."

"Yeah, all that." Jack thought he'd just thought it, but Mac's attention zeroed in on him, and Jack slowly climbed to his own feet.

He didn't feel weird. Didn't feel any different. The ground was solid under his feet. His arms and legs worked. There was no pain.

He felt totally normal.

Jack glanced back over at Mac, who was still watching him uneasily, and said the first thing that came to his mind. "You lied to me," Jack accused, tears momentarily forgotten. " _Dude_. Are you freakin' _kidding_ me?!"

Mac blinked at him, completely nonplussed. "Well, clearly I wasn't expecting _this_ . . ."

And the little shit was actually trying to defend himself!? "Doesn't matter!" Jack cut the air with his hand. "Number one, I told you the dead could hear and see us, and number two, you _lied_ to me!"

Mac straightened in indignation. "Jack, I was hoping to make you feel better! Would you rather have died in - in worry and panic?"

"Well I guess now we'll never know!"

Jack didn't realize he was shouting until he heard the echo, and Mac gave him another incredulous look. When he spoke, though, his voice was much more calm. ". . . you know, I'd have thought you'd be happier about this."

Jack stared at him a second, completely thunderstruck. "How do you figure?"

And damned if that cocky half-smirk didn't appeared on his face. "You've threatened to kill me if I died, Jack - more than once. Now we get to see if you can."

Jack simpered but let it go, and stepped away from his body. Now that he could see it, he understood better why Mac had done what he'd done. He was a hot mess. It looked like he'd gone five rounds with a picador. There were multiple stab wounds in his chest and his abdomen, one of his legs was definitely broken, and his face was basically ground hamburger.

No wonder Mac had made the face he'd made, hadn't known what to do. He couldn't even say the wound Mac had chosen to try to staunch was the worst one. It seemed like it was right over his heart. He had no damn idea how he could have spoken at all with his jaw shattered like it was, and Jack averted his eyes.

Any righteous anger he'd still been feeling towards Mac instantly drained away. "Kid . . . I am _so_ sorry . . ."

Mac waved him off, giving his own body one more look before he picked his way around the blood. "Well . . ." He trailed off, inspecting his hands and flexing them a few times, experimentally. ". . . here we are . . ." After a second's pause, he looked up, his eyes searching. "Can't say I saw this coming."

Jack nodded, crossing the small pen, and when he was close enough, he clasped Mac's hand and pulled him in for a chest bump. Mac felt warm and solid, like he always had. "No one I'd rather be dead with, partner."

Mac nodded. "Same." Then he glanced around them, this time at the entire room, with the air of someone who wasn't quite sure what to do with himself.

A shout of pain echoed down from the open basement stairs.

 _Riley_.

They locked eyes a moment, then both made a beeline for the door. Jack clearly heard his bare feet slapping on the stairs as he bounded up them two at a time, right on Mac's heels. It was fairly dim at the top of the stairs, the walls dingy like the place had housed chainsmokers for the last century or so, but there was no discernable odor.

Jack had no recollection of any part of the house except the basement, but Mac seemed to know the way, taking the first right down a narrow hallway. Jack glanced through an open door as they sprinted past – a blood-spotted bathroom – and Mac actually grabbed the doorframe on the left so that he could make the sharp turn at speed.

That room was also small, it had once been a bedroom and the naked metal bedframe was standing up on one end, apparently screwed to the wall. Two pairs of handcuffs hung from the top of the frame, in better circumstances he might have made a joke, but then Jack realized that Mac had led them here first, and anything else he was going to say died on his lips.

The floor was hardwood, and didn't show much blood. The room was otherwise empty.

From further down the hallway Jack heard Riley yelp, and then a low rumbling voice. He shot back out into the hallway, this time in the lead, and headed straight for the end of it, where the door was half open. He put out his hand to shove it out of the way as he approached, and his hand passed through it like it wasn't there.

The rest of him did the same thing.

Jack stumbled to a stop, too shocked by what he'd just done to get out of the way, and Mac, who couldn't see him, plowed right into him. While neither of them had been able to touch the door, Mac was still plenty solid, and they both went down. Jack craned his neck, to tell Mac to get off, and then he saw the rest of the room.

This room was somewhat bigger, maybe at one time it had been a sitting room. There were windows on two walls, covered in cardboard and only letting in a little light. Riley was seated at a collapsible card table, with the side of her hand pressed to the corner of her mouth, glaring daggers at the Romanian who had just pistol-whipped her. Wilt was piled up in the other corner, clearly slumped there after taking a beating himself; one of his eyes was swelled nearly shut. He looked pretty dazed.

"Boze," Mac called out, hesitantly, already climbing up off his partner, and Jack accepted the hand Mac absently offered him. Bozer, for his part, didn't seem to hear or see them, he just kept staring at the gun pointed at his face by the Romanian's lieutenant.

"I'm not going to ask you again," the Romanian snarled at Riley, righting the gun in his hand and cocking back the hammer. "We were merciful with the blond. But I can put a _hundred_ bullets into his man while he's still alive to feel each and every one if you don't decrypt that drive."

"And I'm not going to _tell_ you again," Riley growled back, her hand still pressed to the corner of her mouth. "He walks, free and clear. And he does it _first_."

The lieutenant sighed, as if his patience was at an end, and steadied his weapon. Jack shook himself out of his shock, marched right up to the guy, and punched him in the side of the head. But like with the door, his fist went right through the goon. He didn't even notice.

"Dammit, Mac, what do we do?!" he shouted, balling up his other fist and giving that one a go, with the same result. Mac had approached the Romanian, and waved his hand through the guy's upper body.

"Do you feel anything when you do this?" he asked, at the same time as the Romanian spoke.

"No, girlie. That's not how this is gonna work."

"Then kill us both right now," she snapped, dropping her hand and revealing the fresh cut in the corner of her mouth. "Because if you do _anything_ besides let him go, not only will I blow away all that inventory data . . . I'll make sure every cop with an INTERPOL laptop knows exactly where you are."

Jack looked between them helplessly, even as Mac laid his hand palm open, ever so gently, on the back of the Romanian's head. Just like in the movies, it seemed to pass through like there was nothing there.

"I can kinda feel a tingle," Mac murmured. "We might be able to interact with them on a – well, on an electrical level."

Jack tried it, but he didn't feel anything. Besides rage. "Dammit, I thought when ghosts got pissed they could _do_ shit!"

Mac continued looking thoughtful, almost seeming to caress the Romanian's hair, and Jack decided to concentrate on the gun instead of the goon. But just like the door, his strikes went right through it. It never wavered.

The Romanian, however, irritably twitched his head like he was shooing off a fly, and Mac got his 'I've got an idea' look.

"You know, getting your competition's inventory, that'd set you guys up for _years_ ," Riley added in a more offhanded tone. "You really want to throw that all away, when it's right there, ripe for the taking?"

"Riley . . . don't . . ." It was little more than a hoarse whisper, and Jack turned back to get a bead on Bozer. He sounded and looked weak and pathetic, like he couldn't get up if he tried. They hadn't even bothered to put his handcuffs back on him. For a split second, Jack was almost disappointed that he'd let his guard down that much, with so much at stake, with their lives on the line, and then –

And then he realized Bozer wouldn't. Bozer would pile on the bravado, just like Riley was doing, until the very end. He wasn't acting scared – he was acting pitiful.

He was acting. Which meant he was better off than he wanted them to think he was, and if they could just do something, create _some_ kind of distraction, he might be able to take one of these guys down.

"Homie, tell me you got somethin', because if you don't, I think Bozer's gonna try to rush these guys –"

"Yeah," Mac said distractedly, closely studying the back of the Romanian's head. "Look, if you buy into – well, _ghosts_ , the only theories that make sense are that we're – we're essentially in another dimension. We can see and hear, though, which means we're able to interact with the environment at some level, and light being waves and electrons being both waves and particles –"

The Romanian, in the meantime, had growled another threat at Riley, who looked ready and willing to rip his face off. This stalemate wouldn't last forever. "Dude. Spit it out _before_ she gets shot?"

Mac closed his mouth with a put-upon noise, then focused all of his attention on the back of the Romanian's skull. After a beat, he extended one of his fingers, and poked him in the back of the head.

His finger went right through the guy, just like before, and Jack realized he was legitimately disappointed. He'd really expected that to work. "Alright, so what el-"

The Romanian suddenly jerked, almost like he was having a seizure, and then collapsed onto his knees.

Several things then happened, quite rapidly.

Riley jumped in the chair, legitimately startled, and the goon took his eyes off Bozer to whip around and figure out what just happened to his boss. Wilt was startled, too, but he didn't let that stop him; he shoved himself off the wall and tackled the lieutenant around the waist, taking them both to the ground. Riley recovered herself, making a grab for the Romanian's gun.

The Romanian gun-runner was only temporarily stunned by whatever Mac had done to him; he had the presence of mind to hang onto his weapon, so Riley tugged him forward and buried her right knee in his face, just like she'd practiced it in the ring, so many times. Jack felt pride swell in his chest, that turned into ice as he realized Bozer wasn't as well off as he'd seemed, because he was definitely getting the worse end of his wrestling match with the lieutenant.

The Romanian's goon still had his hand on his gun, and he'd turned it towards Bozer. Totally on reflex, Jack kicked the goon's gun hand – and connected. He didn't really feel it, but the gun flew out of the lieutenant's hand and clattered to the floor.

Bozer didn't look the gift horse in the mouth. He swung, uncoordinatedly but hard, and landed a solid left hook on the goon. Then he stumbled to his feet, right about the same time Riley followed up her knee with her bound hands. She knocked the Romanian flat onto his back, his nose a fountain of blood, and then reached out and grabbed Wilt before he could faceplant on the floor beside him. The two Phoenix agents stumbled towards the door, intent on escape, and Jack exchanged a quick look with Mac.

"Fuck yeah! Let's Swayze the _shit_ outta these guys!"

Mac flashed him a quick grin, then glanced down at the Romanian, still trying to get his shit together after Riley very likely broke his nose. "You do realize we're not-"

"Less talking! More ass kicking!" He punctuated that sentence with a swift kick to the lieutenant's face – that went right through him without connecting. The goon was gathering both his wits and his gun, and to Jack's dismay, neither Riley nor Bozer seemed to notice or care. Riley did think to grab the door on her way out, slamming it behind her and buying them a few more seconds, but she didn't seem willing to risk continuing a hand to hand fight with her wrists ziptied together.

And then he realized why.

She wasn't going to leave Bozer's side, and she wasn't going to let them split up. And the reason for that decision – what might become a very bad decision – was frowning down at his guy, with his finger poking in the Romanian's skull again.

Only this time it didn't seem to be doing much of anything.

"Okay, hoss, why the hell ain't this workin'-"

There was no smile on Mac's face when the Romanian sat up – directly between Mac's legs. "I don't know - I'm just as new to this as you are, Jack! What did you do differently when you hit your guy?"

"I don't know!" Jack tried a hip check as the lieutenant hauled himself to his feet, but he had the same amount of luck as before. "I just did!"

"Well – do it again!" Mac was wearing his concentrating frown, but now the Romanian was a moving target, not as easy for Mac to hone in on, and he tried to wave his lieutenant off as the goon approached him.

"Get th'agents! The agents!"

Mac looked right at him, and Jack growled and turned for the door. At least he and Mac didn't have to open it.

However, once they'd run through it, Jack saw that Bozer and Riley hadn't gotten nearly as far as they needed to. Bozer was only halfway down the hallway, leaning heavily on the wall and clutching his right shoulder, and Riley had just darted out of one of the rooms with a laptop – and presumably the intel – in her still-bound hands. She extended her right arm, as much as she could, and Bozer grabbed it to help steady himself as they took off towards the front of the house.

Of course, the hallway took them right by the stairway that led to the basement, and Bozer started to slow. Riley shook her head, once, trying to pull him along. "Boze, we gotta go-"

"But-Mac'n'Jack-"

Jack couldn't see her face, he and Mac were still behind them, but her voice broke his no-longer-beating heart. "They're – we can't help them."

Wilt put on the brakes like he meant it, then, a half-protest already on his lips, and Riley's hair flew over her shoulder as she turned and looked behind her, right at them – at him and Mac – like she could see them bringing up the rear. There were no tears on her face, not yet. "Bozer, we can't – we can't carry them!"

But of course she was looking behind _them_ , through them more like, knowing that the door was going to open any second, and their small lead wasn't going to be enough.

But Wilt didn't understand, still pulling for the open stairwell. "I'm'not leavin'em-"

"Don't! Don't look, please," she begged, juggling the laptop so she could slip one of her hands into Bozer's. "We'll come back, I _promise_ you-"

It finally started to trickle in, and Bozer allowed her to drag him forward a few stumbling steps. "The . . . nuh-uh . . ."

The door behind him and Mac _did_ open, then, Jack risked a glance behind him as Riley and Bozer made it at least around a corner towards the front of the house. "C'mon, man, we gotta stall 'em, buy some time-"

"I know!" Mac sounded as frustrated as Jack felt. "Look, maybe it's a timing thing, uh – we only generate so much of an electrical field at any given moment, like static, and we need to – to reload," he finally offered, an explanation he knew Jack would understand.

Understand and not like. "You're tellin' me we're already outta _ammo_?!"

Mac gave him a helpless shrug, and darted into the room that Riley had just vacated.

"Dammit, Mac, what're'y-" He gave up even as he said it, turning on the lieutenant, who had just started running after taking aim but failing to get a clear shot at either fleeing agent. Jack dug in his feet like a linebacker, just waiting to clothesline an unsuspecting quarterback. "C'mere, you son of a bitch –"

Just as the lieutenant was on top of him – and likely to once again pass right through – Mac re-appeared in the doorway and plunged his fist right into the guy's ribcage.

It was over in a second, the dude plowed right through Jack and he didn't even feel a tingle, and Mac's crestfallen expression told him whatever his partner had just tried, definitely didn't work.

"So much for that idea," he muttered, and then the two were in hot pursuit.

The lieutenant made it around the corner, and he fired twice before Jack caught up and got line of sight on his two teammates. The front door had been thrown wide and Bozer's back was just disappearing. Jack had no memory of the yard or the street outside, but he was somehow not surprised to see the area looked residential – though definitely run down. That was still good, that worked in their favor. No matter how well the basement might have insulated the sound of those gunshots, these guys couldn't shoot up a neighborhood street – even in a relatively poor area of Budapest – without attracting law enforcement.

Police would be on the way soon. Riley and Boze simply had to evade until then.

There was hope.

Jack started forward immediately, right on the goon's heels. Knowing that he didn't have to yield right of way, Jack's plan was to cut the corner and see what was on the left side of the house, see what Riley and Bozer could use for cover or escape.

But instead, a cold shiver ran through his chest, and the lieutenant was body-checked into the doorframe. His face bounced off the molding and then he was down.

Jack was shocked enough that he actually stopped, staring down at the dude and raising a hand to his chest. It was still tingling a little, where he'd made contact, but it didn't hurt. And it looked like he'd knocked the guy out cold. A firm hand slapped down on his shoulder as Mac slipped past him out the door.

" _Nice_ , Jack!" But he had eyes only for the corner of the house, and Jack knew what he was afraid he was going to see. With one last look at the goon – who was definitely going to be out for a couple minutes – Jack followed.

The yard was non-descript, rain-drenched, and dreary. Winter wasn't far away and the trees and bushes weren't going to provide as much cover as they would have in a better season. Riley and Bozer had left a pretty easy-to-follow path around the corner of the house, and even as Mac slipped, barefoot, in the mud, Jack saw that he didn't leave a mark. He put his own bare foot down on the soggy half-dead grass, but he didn't feel any cold, any damp at all. He didn't so much as move a blade of grass, even though he could feel something solid under him.

It felt like . . . flat, room temperature concrete. Felt like the floor in that basement.

It also wasn't the most important thing he had going on right then, so after a couple steps Jack got used to the weird incongruity between what he saw and what he felt, and sprinted after his partner.

Riley and Bozer had made it to an alley that ran behind the two rows of houses, parallel with the street, and had chosen a direction apparently at random. It had enough trash cans and dumpsters to provide some cover, and better yet, it was paved. Mac followed them at a slightly slower jog, his head ducking every which way as he catalogued all the things around them – things he could have used, if he wasn't dead – to help them, to build boobytraps, to delay their pursuers long enough for the Hungarian po-po to get their act together.

After about fifty yards Riley decided they'd risked an out-in-the-open sprint long enough, and she tugged Bozer behind a pair of rusted-out dumpsters up against a nondescript, two story house. Bozer collapsed against the wall as soon as she let go of him, gasping for breath and still cradling that shoulder, but it didn't look like he'd been hit by either of the rounds the lieutenant had gotten off. Riley wasn't hit either; she kept glancing straight up, and once Jack caught up to them, he followed her gaze to the roof of the house, which had a fairly new-looking sat dish on the roof.

Looking for wifi, or a way to transmit the data.

"Riles, honey, you gotta get yourself safe before you fool around with that," he murmured, coming to a stop beside Mac, who was standing in plain sight in the middle of the alley, still examining their surroundings.

"She thinks once she transmits it, they'll cut their losses and run," Mac supplied, sounding distracted.

"Well, duh, chief, but it's not the right play here, she's a damn sittin' duck-"

"You and I know that, but they don't." Mac cut himself off, then quietly swore in frustration. Jack followed his gaze back the way they'd come, and spotted the Romanian, carefully poking his head into the alley.

"Damn these guys," Jack growled, glancing back at the two panting agents, thankfully huddled well out of sight. It wasn't so cold that their breath was steaming, so at least that wouldn't give them away. Riley had the laptop open and even with her hands still zip-tied together she was managing to type. Bozer was slumped against the foot of the house, his scalp digging into the brick and his good eye screwed tightly shut.

"I think Bozer's shoulder's dislocated," Mac knelt down in front of him, giving him a visual once over. "Ribs don't sound broken, though. He can run, but it's gonna suck." He inspected Riley with the same critical eye, then frowned, and moved so that he could see the laptop screen.

Jack kept tabs on their slowly advancing Romanian. Of course he'd picked the correct direction, too, meaning they had even less time. "What's she doin', and how long's it gonna take?"

Mac shook his head, studying the screen. "I can't tell. She's definitely trying to connect to Phoenix, but . . ." He trailed off, at the same time Riley frowned, and started banging faster on the keys.

As if Bozer could hear them, he sucked down a deeper breath. "We can't stay here-"

"I know," Riley murmured back softly. "But we can't just hide in someone's house – they'll find us, and if they don't Budapest PD will. What are we supposed to tell the cops, hey, we're American agents operating secretly in your country, please don't arrest us for breaking and entering?"

"I'll take hide and seek over dead," Bozer shot back, then grimaced and bit his bottom lip. "Those . . . all those gunshots-"

Riley hesitated, and her fingers stilled on the keys. "Yeah," was all she said.

Bozer closed his eyes again. ". . . an' . . . you're sure . . ."

". . . yeah." After a long moment she visibly shook it off, and kept typing. "I'm getting us a ride. See if you can find something we can use to fend those guys off til then."

"An' get you outta those zipties," Bozer agreed, opening damp eyes – as best he could around the swelling - and starting to really take in their surroundings.

"Good, Boze, you can do this," Mac murmured encouragingly. "Remember, you don't need a cutting tool, you can just pop the release on zipties."

" . . . that won't give you tetanus," Bozer continued sourly, trying to work his fingers into a rusted hole in the dumpster with the clear intention of breaking a piece loose. The look on Mac's face would have been comical if it wasn't a life and death situation, and Jack put a bracing hand on Mac's shoulder.

"Pretty sure they're both gonna do opposite what we say."

"I'm thinking you're right," Mac agreed reluctantly, as Bozer started to work loose a sharp piece of metal. He wasn't doing it silently, either, but at least he was trying not to move the dumpster. Riley shushed him with a soft hiss, and he winced in reply, then dared to peek around the edge of the dumpster.

He finally saw what they could see – that the Romanian was working his way quickly and methodically down the alley, checking the back doors of each house and looking behind every garbage bin. Jack estimated they had a little over a minute before he'd make his way to them, and given the sudden urgency with which Bozer was moving, it was pretty clear that he at least agreed with them on _that_.

"Riley!" he hissed, turning at the waist to avoid having to move his shoulder or neck in any way. "He's comin'!"

"Dammit," she growled to herself, still typing feverishly while Bozer tried to find something he could use as a weapon. Jack spotted several – there was plenty of glass to be had, it made an excellent weapon for hand to hand, and would cut through Riley's zip ties just as well - and Mac remained hunkered down beside Riley, studying the laptop. He poked the monitor experimentally, Jack actually saw the tip of his finger come out the other side. Based on Riley's expression, it did _something_ , but whatever it was didn't seem to please Mac, who frowned and withdrew his finger.

"I can disrupt the laptop, but not in any way that'll help. Besides maybe making her pack up and run."

There were two paths of escape currently available to the agents, but with the ground as soft as it was, they'd leave footprints. "Unless Boze gets his shit together, I think that might be our only play."

"Well, the other option is to try to communicate with her, but we don't have enough time, and I doubt she'd take it very well. Hey, it's Mac, I'm dead but I'm also standing right here, you should run now?" Mac made a face and straightened, checking on the Romanian's progress for himself.

He'd hit the halfway mark. If Riley and Bozer didn't run in the next ten seconds, they weren't going to have enough lead to do anything besides get shot in the back. Bozer had to actually trip over a glass bottle before it occurred to him that it might be useful, and as bad as his shoulder was hurting him, Jack didn't like his odds.

"Hey, Riley – we can use this to cut your zipties," he whispered, and Riley glanced first at him, then the broken bottle in his hand, before she nodded and put the laptop down on its right side, propped up by the monitor in a 'V' shape.

"Okay – hurry," she shot back, holding out her wrists, and Bozer got started right away.

Their ten second window was ticking down too fast, and Jack eyed his partner grimly. "Think you can pull that seizure trick again?" he asked, jerking his chin at the approaching gun runner. "That was pretty cool."

"Yeah," Mac scoffed, but at least his thinking face was back on. "Jack, you've managed to punch these guys _twice_. How did you do it?"

"I don't know." Not that he hadn't been trying to figure that out, and it reminded him to flex his toes, confirming that he could still feel solid ground under his feet. "It's not gettin' mad and hulkin' out, that's for sure."

Mac made a 'hurry up' gesture and Jack frowned at him. "Well whaddaya want me to say?"

"Did you . . . did you _feel_ something, before it happened? Did you do something differently?"

"Did you?" He didn't mean it to sound so defensive, but the truth was, he hadn't. Body-checking the lieutenant had been a total accident. "I wasn't even tryin' the second time."

Mac's head cocked to the side. "What were you doing right before that happened?"

"Bein' thankful I could plow right through the guy to catch up to these yahoos." Said yahoos had finally gotten Riley free, and she picked up the laptop, scanning the screen before a triumphant smirk curved her lips, and then she closed it.

"Let's go," she whispered to Bozer, who did a double-take to get the Romanian's position before he backed up and started following her up the muddy hill beside the house.

"Wait," he whispered suddenly, trying to balance on one foot and almost tipping against the house with his bad shoulder. He carefully backtracked – and he was wearing shoes, Jack suddenly noticed – and went back to the pavement of the alley. Then he walked his muddy feet forward all the way to the back door of the house.

"Nice," Jack complimented him. "Make him think the footprints belong to the homeowner." It wasn't perfect, since the mud was so fresh, but it was the best they could do, and it might buy them a few more seconds.

Riley had stopped dead in her tracks, and she simply encouraged Bozer to hurry up by waving a newly freed hand at him. There were shallow cuts on her wrist. "Come on come on come on-"

He then made a new path from the door to the hill and retraced Riley's steps until he caught up to her. "Step in my footprints," he murmured, and Jack was glad to see Riley was already on the same page. Bozer wasn't able to run quickly, by any stretch, and Jack uneasily let them scramble out of sight as he joined his partner, who was evaluating the quickly nearing Romanian.

"That big brain of yours come up with the solution yet?"

Mac shrugged, wiggling his fingers as if to warm them up. "Let's test a hypothesis."

"Yeah, let's just do that," Jack growled in agreement, as the Romanian headed quickly for their two dumpsters – and their two teammates.

This time it was Mac who stepped forward, then planted himself almost like a German sentry, and held up his hand, palm flat out towards the Romanian's face.

Jack would have held his breath if he actually needed to breathe.

The gun-runner had taken a whack at getting some of the blood off his face, but his nose was still sluggishly bleeding and every once in a while he'd reach up to dab the blood off. Again, residential area, someone heard those gunshots, and a bloodied man skulking around behind the row would definitely be the first thing the police would investigate. Riley and Bozer were questionable youths loitering around, but this guy was downright suspicious. And he took the opportunity to dab that oozing nose again when he walked face-first into Mac's outstretched hand.

And although Mac wasn't knocked so much as a step back, the guy bounced off his hand with a cry of pain, actually dropping to his knees to cradle his face.

Mac responded by turned his hand over and quietly studying it. Jack was less composed; he let out a whoop of victory.

" _Yes!_ "

"Let's not celebrate yet, big guy," Mac cautioned him, but he was grinning when he said it, and the two quickly headed up the muddy hill after Riley and Boze.

Their single set of footprints led into the front yard of the house and up to the porch, right up to the front door, but they were nowhere in sight. Another set of muddy prints led down the front sidewalk of the house to the driveway and abruptly ended. Jack didn't remember hearing a car, though clearly the footprints had been left to make someone think they'd driven away, and he started looking at the rock and bricks that separated the garden from the mangy lawn.

Sure enough, fresh mud was smeared on a few, leading them to the street. From there, they'd gotten enough of the mud off, and the street had enough drying puddles, that there weren't clear sets of tracks.

However, there was a house across the street with another one of those shiny new satellite dishes, and Jack pointed to it. "My money's on that one."

"Let's go," Mac agreed, loping easily across the street. Though his bare feet made noises as they whispered over the pavement, he didn't make a single ripple in any puddle.

It was _weird_.

Jack followed him, a little slower, taking in the lack of regular street traffic. Flagging down a passing motorist was going to be a trick, and it meant the neighborhood was actually pretty quiet. Some kind of ethnic music was playing somewhere, but it was pretty muffled, and he could hear Riley and Bozer breathing before he actually found them, huddled behind the house Jack had picked.

"-don't know how," he heard Bozer admit. He'd taken a knee to help support his busted right shoulder, and while you could never really call Bozer pale, his lips were starting to turn ashy. Mac was standing at his shoulder, frowning at an old beater about ten feet away from them, parked under a rust-stained cover attached to the side of the house.

"Me neither," Riley confirmed. "I never really paid attention, Jack –" She cut herself off suddenly, and found her laptop suddenly fascinating.

Bozer's ashen lips pressed together, hard.

"I take it they can't hotwire the car," Jack said softly, and Mac gave him a solemn nod.

"Yeah. I mean, Boze helped out when I was tinkering, but he never really had an aptitude for electrical work. We both took shop together in high school, he could probably figure it out, but getting under the dash with that shoulder . . ." Mac sighed, then approached the car, and stuffed his head right through the driver's side door.

"Y'think you can use your Jedi powers an' start it for 'em?"

His partner's khaki-colored butt moved to lean on the side of the car door, but it passed through without making contact, and Mac stumbled a little. His feet were still visible, under the car. Weirdly, his voice sounded muffled when he replied.

"I don't think so, I could maybe get it to start but the battery'd still have to be connected . . . I don't see how I can do that without rewiring around the starter." Then he poked his head out the door and frowned. "I'd kill for a flashlight-"

His voice trailed off, and Jack followed his suddenly stock-still partner's gaze, to find none other than the lieutenant he'd knocked out, walking baldly down the street. His nose wasn't broken, but he had a huge egg on his forehead, and he was keeping his gun at his side, mostly out of view.

"Son of a _bitch_ ," Jack swore. "What the hell is with these guys?!" Worse, the Romanian had slipped his way up the muddy hill across the street, and the two men spotted one another and moved to reconvene.

Almost precisely across the street from the house that Riley had chosen to hide behind.

"Well, we're only getting in one hit at a time, it's hard to finish them off that way." Mac glanced back at Riley again, who was still working on the laptop. "Even if Phoenix knows where they are by now, there's no way armed exfil will get here before –" He cut himself off, then heaved a short sigh. Jack took a moment to be surprised that his partner could, and tried it out himself.

It worked. He was able to take a breath. In fact it felt totally normal.

"Hey, bud," and he rehearsed it in his head a second, to check how crazy it sounded, "How're we walkin' on the ground but passin' through everything else?" And – hadn't Mac actually touched the wall, that time, when he'd dashed into the room they thought Riley was being held in . . . ?

"Yeah . . . try not to think about that," Mac advised him, suddenly interested in the power lines running along the street. He started towards them, thinking face firmly in place, and Jack glanced back at Riley and Bozer, still oblivious, still focused on the laptop, then jogged after his partner.

"Why not? An' – how'd you palm strike that guy?"

Mac started pacing out distances, from where the powerline connected to the corner of the house, out to the street. There was a handy utility box a few houses down – with a big red warning sticker that did not require Jack to be able to read Hungarian to understand.

Mac had clearly spotted it too. "I, uh, I'm still not completely sure on the second one, but on the first . . . I think we probably could fall through the ground if we tried. So don't."

Jack was about to ask him why when the answer became readily apparent – because then he'd be underground. Potentially for – however long this lasted. Maybe forever.

There would be no difference between being a ghost, and just being dead and buried. Or alive and buried. Just –

Just you wouldn't eventually suffocate and die. There'd be no end.

Naturally, the second he realized he needed to stop thinking about it, it was all he could think about, and Jack immediately started grasping for a distraction. "So, whatcha thinkin' about these power lines?"

"I'm thinking we may be able to use them to put a barrier between these guys and us." Mac also seemed glad for the distraction. "Regardless of what Riley thinks, the local police are a better solution than trying to hide out here and eventually boost a car. And taking out utilities would guarantee enough activity on the street to keep them safe until Phoenix gets exfil here."

Jack eyed the power lines, then the utility box that he had no doubt was going to play a part in this little 'plan' of Mac's. "And that ain't gonna . . . y'know –"

"Kill me?" Mac suggested with a grin, before trotting back towards where the wire connected to the house. "I don't think so, but I'll be careful."

"Now when the hell are you _ever_ careful, Angus?" Jack shot back, but he left Mac to it, sharpening his attention when the Romanian and his lieutenant seemed to be coming to some kind of agreement on a plan. Realizing he was being a complete idiot, Jack darted across the street to join their little meeting.

After all, wasn't like they could see or hear him.

Of course, not being able to see or hear him, they weren't polite enough to speak in English. He caught a few words here and there, and then the lieutenant gave a nod, and patted his pocket. There was a muffled, metallic rattle.

Keys.

"Yeah, it's about time you fuckers split," Jack agreed, but the Romanian seemed to be giving it some thought. He got a vicious grin on his face – that made him wince, and damn right it did, smiling with a broken nose sucked and if Jack could figure out how to break it more he would – and snarled something, and his lieutenant's answering leer was just as ugly. Then the goon turned and headed back to their base of operations, and the Romanian's eyes naturally fell on the house across the street.

"Come _on_ ," Jack whined as the man headed unerringly right for it. "You gotta be _kidding_ me!"

Mac was studying the tangle of wires that was connected to the one-story house – probably trying to determine which was power, and which was whatever Riley was using to do whatever it was she was doing – and he glanced over when he clocked the movement. Jack threw his hands in the air.

"I know, right?!"

Mac started to signal something back, but gave up on it halfway and went right back to looking at the wires. "Buy me twenty seconds!"

"Dammit, Mac, if I could do that they'd be out 'til next week!" Or dead. Maybe it would be easier to punch them if they were also dead.

With that happy thought firmly in place, Jack danced along beside the Romanian, trying everything he could think of to make contact. A tight fist, a soft fist, he even just threw out his arm randomly, hoping not actually trying was the trick, but he wasn't accomplishing anything. The Romanian had just set foot on the pavement when a car turned onto the street from the corner, about five houses away.

For once luck was on their side; the four door sedan turned towards them, but unfortunately it wasn't a police cruiser – or at least it wasn't a marked one. Still, it was enough. The Romanian decided to stay on his side of the road for the time being, turning quickly so his blood-spattered shirt wouldn't draw immediate attention.

And luck stayed with them. After slowly approaching, the driver pulled up to the curb one house away. It was a young man, dark complexion, and he had his eyes on his phone. Outside of the driver, the car appeared to be empty.

For a moment, Jack couldn't believe that something was _finally_ going their way; the Romanian was forced to turn again and walk back towards his own lair, though he did shoot a suspicious glance over his shoulder. And the driver in the car didn't get out, he stayed idling by the curb. And Jack had a terrible, terrible thought.

Riley had said she was getting them a ride.

Surely – surely to God and all that was holy in Heaven – Riley hadn't meant that literally. Hadn't _literally_ called an Uber.

Jack glanced past the car, not surprised to see that Mac had also spotted it, and was staring at it with a mixture of bewilderment and slowly dawning dread.

And Jack knew, absolutely knew it in the bottom his lukewarm dead heart, that that was exactly what Riley had done.

Not five seconds later, a second car, this one coming from the opposite direction, pulled onto the street – and headed right for them. This one also approached sedately, and picked a house on the Romanian's side of the street. The next two arrived at nearly the same time, picking two houses further down, also on opposite sides of the street. A fifth then cruised down past the now-still Romanian, and damned if it didn't pull up right in front of the gun-runner's house.

"Riley you're a _genius_!" Jack shouted, jogging back across the street. It was still going to be a trick, getting into one of the cars without being seen, but at the very least she'd created a distraction, and some traffic to boot. It was a fairly narrow street, so if she could get all the Ubers to disperse at the same time, she might be able to get out in the confusion.

Their gun-runner had had the same thought. He was headed as quickly as he could un-suspiciously hurry back to his house, where a metallic gold four-door was just backing out of the covered carport.

His lieutenant.

Mac was hesitating by the house, eyeing all the cars and apparently re-thinking his plan to blow up the power grid, and Jack slapped his arm as he jogged by and looped the house.

To find that Bozer and Riley were no longer there.

"Mac, they bailed!" he shouted, then followed the trail they'd tried very hard not to leave, headed –

Headed directly towards the gun-runner's house.

And that tactic bought Riley another couple points. The Romanian would assume she'd want to use one of the cars furthest from him – in either direction – so she was essentially looping behind him and sneaking out right under his nose. It was a solid plan, until the Uber driver sent to the gun-runner's house ended up blocking the Romanian's lieutenant into his own driveway.

Jack watched it all fall apart in almost slow motion.

Riley and Bozer started out from the house across the street from the gun runner before they realized that he was in fact _still at his own house_. Jack watched them hesitate for a split second, then duck down and continue out, using the Uber car itself to block them from being seen as the gun-runner's lieutenant tried to back out onto the crowded street. Because Riley's Uber could see it was about to start loading passengers, it refused to move, leaving the Uber called to the gun-runner's address unable to move for the lieutenant's van. The Romanian himself was shouting at the Uber driver blocking his goon, and the Uber driver was shouting back – both in Hungarian, but the topic was easy to guess – and Bozer had just slid into the front passenger seat of _his_ Uber, using the driver as a shield between himself and the arguing people, when the Romanian turned on their Uber to start yelling at it to move.

Bozer's tactic worked – the Romanian couldn't see him. But he could see Riley opening the back passenger door.

_Shit!_

Jack sprinted into the street, not caring about the shifting cars – they couldn't touch him, after all – as the Romanian shouted, probably to his lieutenant, pointing to Riley even as he started for the car. Riley looked up in alarm, then slammed the passenger door closed without getting in and pounded on the roof of it, trying to signal the Uber driver to leave without her. Their driver had his window down, to shout at the Romanian who was shouting at him, and Bozer got into the mix, trying to get out of the car at the same time.

He didn't want to leave Riley. And if at least _one_ of them didn't make it out in one of these cars, all four of them were going to end up dead today.

Jack came to a quick stop right next to the Uber that contained Bozer, at the same time to Romanian, still across the street but with all his focus on the car Bozer was in, fired a couple shots into the air. Riley ducked out of sight, and Jack didn't even think. He reared back and jammed his foot into Bozer's Uber, into the driver's footwell, right where the accelerator should have been.

And though he didn't feel any more than a tingle, Bozer's Uber lurched forward with a squeal of tires.

Most of the other Ubers on the street were already responding to the gunshots by also peeling out, creating both smoke and general mayhem, and thankfully Bozer's Uber driver, who clearly hadn't expected the car to suddenly jolt forward on him, decided that was the best move and continued to floor it with Bozer still inside. One of the other retreating cars then sailed right through Jack like he wasn't there, giving him an unexpected tingle. By this time Mac had caught up to him, heading for the Romanian, and Jack only had eyes for where Riley had ended up.

And he discovered he had no damn idea. She'd pulled a disappearing trick of her own.

"Riley!" he shouted on instinct, mentally cursing himself when he realized how stupid it was, but the cars were clearing in both directions and she was nowhere to be seen.

Mac, meanwhile, had apparently reached his limit, because he ran full tilt at the Romanian – and connected like a quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys. The Romanian was hurled backwards _hard_ into the muddy grass, gasping as if Mac had knocked the wind out of him. The lieutenant, who had been in the process of backing out of the driveway to follow Bozer's Uber, slammed on his brakes to jump out and help his boss.

Approaching police sirens cut through the noise of the still-retreating Ubers.

The lieutenant hesitated, then apparently decided to cut bait and run, because he peeled out into the street, leaving his boss in the yard. He headed in the same direction as Bozer's Uber, which had just turned the corner from whence it originated, still visible, and Mac growled something Jack couldn't quite make out, and dashed into the street, directly in front of it.

Jack watched the guy throw the car into gear and charge headlong towards Mac, who dropped his chin a little, as focused and furious as Jack had ever seen him. Just as the car was about to hit him, Mac ducked and put his shoulder to it, as if he thought he was going to be able to stop it in its tracks.

And for reasons he didn't understand, because they were dead, they were both of them already dead, Jack felt his chest seize up again, and his body hurled itself into the street to knock Mac out of the way, knowing he'd never get there in time.

" _Mac!_ " Body-checking a human was one thing, but a _car_?!

The car plowed through MacGyver like he wasn't there, and Mac reappeared after the car passed, right where he'd been, eyes squeezed tightly shut. For a second it looked like whatever he'd tried hadn't worked - and why would it, they never managed two hits in a row, and Jack was pretty damn sure getting mad wasn't enough – and right about the time Mac dared to open his eyes, still crouched in the road, the goon's car gave a sharp squeal and a couple grinding clunks, and then the engine died.

Jack staggered out of his headlong sprint, glancing between Mac, the dead car, the lieutenant trying frantically to restart it, and the squeal of tires at the other end of the street that turned out to be a bona fide Hungarian Five O. In front of him, Mac uncurled himself and straightened, turning to stare at the car he'd just somehow taken out.

Jack wasn't sure whether to cheer or to scream. He did, however, cross the remaining distance and grab his partner's shoulder, spinning him so he could see the damage. "Dude, you okay?!"

And damned if that idiot wasn't laughing. "I think I'm starting to get the hang of this," Mac told him, clapping him on the shoulder. Jack only managed to choke a few strangled chuckles out of his strangely tight throat, and Mac's grin turned lopsided. "Jack . . . relax. There's no way a car can generate anything _near_ the magnitude of the magnetic field it would take to affect either one of us."

He nodded – and not that he understood, but he'd trusted Mac with his life and he felt pretty confident he could trust him with his death – before it occurred to him that while he and Mac might be perfectly safe standing in front of moving vehicles, Riley was most certainly not. Mac could clearly handle the lieutenant and the Romanian, who was _still_ laid flat out in the yard, so Jack left him to it, and headed to the last place he'd seen Riley. She'd left some pretty distinctive footprints near where Bozer's Uber had peeled out, but there were no fresh ones leading back to the house, nor into the street, so . . . had she managed to get into the Uber after all?

"Hey Mac – did you see Riles get in one of the cars?"

Mac had turned back to the street, watching the police cruiser barrel up, and he shook his head. "No, I lost line of sight. And I hate to mention this, but I don't know if we can actually ride in cars, so . . . they might be on their own until we can catch up on foot."

With no idea where they'd been headed – though Jack would have picked the US Consulate since they at least had half a chance of getting there and being protected until Phoenix could arrange exfil – that could take quite a while. And, shit, if they couldn't get in cars, that probably meant planes were out, maybe boats too-

Jack glanced around in shock as he realized the kids might have legitimately left them behind – maybe permanently - but then he saw his mistake, there in the thicker mud at the bottom of the drainage ditch in the yard. Jack hesitated, then hopped into the ditch and knelt down, and sure enough, there in the storm drain that ran under the driveway, he found Riley.

She'd wedged herself as deep into the corrugated metal tube as she could get, into the cold, fetid water and mud, her arms wrapped tight around something – probably the laptop – and her head bowed to her chest, so that her face wouldn't be visible to anyone looking in. As Jack approached, he could hear her panting unsteadily as she started to shiver. She was doing her level best not to make a single sound – not that anyone would have heard it over the police sirens.

". . . oh, honey." Unthinkingly, he reached out to touch her – only to have his fingers pass right through her hair. She'd wedged herself up on the side of the metal, trying to keep herself out of as much of the wet and muck as she could, but she was already feeling it and as soon as it got dark, the temperature was going to drop rapidly. It was a great place to hide out for a minute, but if the police decided to search the Romanian's home, they'd left the basement door wide open, and once the cops got a load of what was down there, between the coroner and the detectives, they'd be here for hours.

She couldn't stay in there that long.

"Got her," Jack called over his shoulder, and then he heard a sputtering motor fail to catch for the umpteenth time before a very authoritative woman's voice started shouting commands.

Jack popped back up in time to see the single Hungarian policewoman was now outside her cruiser, with her weapon drawn and pointed at the Romanian's lieutenant. He was still in the car, and held up one of his hands in surrender. Just one – the other one was holding a cellphone to his ear.

"Craaaap," Jack heard Mac growl, and he raced over to the car, dashing directly through the trunk and back seat even as the policewoman continued shouting orders – and the lieutenant kept speaking into the phone.

Of course. Backup. He was telling the Romanian's other men what had just happened.

Which meant –

Which meant these two were going to jail, but Bozer and Riley were still targets.

Where the policewoman had not been successful in getting the goon to put down his phone, Mac sure as hell was. He was standing stock still in the front of the car, Jack could only see a disembodied head, but whatever Mac did, the goon started yelling into it, and the language didn't matter. Jack had been on the wrong end of enough dropped calls to recognize it when he heard it.

And maybe Riley had, too, down in her storm drain. At least enough to know that he made a call.

Jack watched the woman take the goon into custody – only after he threw down his phone in disgust, and Mac's floating head supervised – and then put his attention on the Romanian, to make sure he was still down and not helping himself to his own cellphone. The asshole was struggling to crawl towards his house, and Jack bared his teeth and marched across the street to try to knee him in the face.

Unfortunately, like before, it didn't work. And Jack tried both his left and right knees, then left and right feet. So how in the hell could he have hit that brake pedal without even trying?! It had been effortless! This was just irritating as all hell -

"Mac! Hey, Mac!"

"You don't have to yell," a voice chided mildly, right in his ear, and Jack actually jumped before he put a hand against his chest.

Not that he thought he was going to feel anything -

"Dammit, dude, are you kidding me!?"

Mac still had that cocky grin on his face, and he stood at Jack's shoulder, staring down at the Romanian gun-runner, who was still trying to crawl away in the mud.

"I wish Riley was up here to see this," Jack growled, turning his ire onto the gunrunner that had damn near killed all four of them. "How do I curbstomp this guy?"

Mac's eyebrows raised, and he adopted what Jack called his 'professor's face' "Well, Jack, it's a lot simpler than I originally thought." He then demonstrated, picking up his right foot – still bare, but without so much as a smudge of mud on it – and brought it down on the man's back, smashing him back down into the mud. The Romanian yelled, but it sounded more frightened now than pained, and Mac cocked his head.

"You know, I think it's safe to say he believes in ghosts now."

Considering he'd run into a wall that wasn't there, been tackled by an invisible quarterback, and now shoved back down by an unseen bare foot, Jack was willing to bet Mac was right. "Serves that fucker right. I'd like to haunt his ass more, but prison's boring. So you gonna tell me how you're doin' that?"

Mac gave him a curious look, like he was trying to figure something out. "You're the one who told me. Showed me, actually."

Jack straightened, giving Mac a look of his own. "Hoss, if I knew how to do what you're doin', I'd damn well have done it by now-"

Mac opened his mouth to reply, but something behind Jack got his attention. "Ah, Jack . . . I think we might have a problem."

He very nearly didn't turn around. When he did, he noticed a nondescript four door creeping by the police cruiser – which now had the gun-runner's lieutenant sitting in the back of it, and the policewoman was headed right for their sniveling Romanian. The car that was crawling by her cruiser, however, had four passengers, all large men, all stereotypical skinheads, and they gave the cop a good long stare before they slowly moved on.

She responded by glaring after them, and getting back on her radio.

"They're lookin' for Ri and Boze."

Mac nodded grimly. "Looks like. You stay with Riley, I'll see if I can lock that basement door."

Because of course if she found the bodies, it was going to get messy. If all she had were suspects, she'd take them to the station, and Riley could get out of that culvert a lot faster. Jack let him go, keeping an eye on the policewoman, and after she got her second suspect in handcuffs and wrestled into the back of the cruiser, some backup arrived to the tune of a second officer and car.

It still wouldn't be enough firepower if the gang decided to bail out their boss, and Jack watched them a moment more before he headed back across the street, hopped back down in the ditch, and checked in with Riley.

She was right where he'd left her, but her head was up now, watching the reflection of the squadcar's lights on the wet grass outside her culvert. She was shivering harder, now, it wasn't until she dropped her head to the cold metal that Jack realized she was crying.

Cuddling her laptop to her, silently weeping, the way she used to when she was a girl, when she didn't want Diane – or god help her, Jack – to know.

It wasn't hard to guess what was on her mind. They were gone, Bozer was in the wind, she had no backup and she was lying in a cold wet ditch. Probably thought the Hungarian police would find the bodies, and make it that much harder for Phoenix to take custody, too. Not to mention she'd gotten knocked around herself, and while she hadn't looked badly injured, it didn't mean she wasn't hurting. In more ways than one.

"Aww, hon, I'm right here with'ya. You really think I'd be anywhere else?" Jack took a seat at the opening of the culvert, not feeling the cold even a little bit, and settled as close to her as he could without crowding her and risking accidentally passing through her.

The thought made him laugh a little. "Yeah, I know how y'are about your personal space," he told her, listening to the unintelligible chatter coming over the police radio, and the soft sounds of her crying. "Listen, Ri, this was a good place to hide out for a second, but you can't stay here all night. That asswipe's goons are lookin' for you, you and Bozer both. Hopefully you got him somewhere safe, somewhere they can fix up that shoulder. I know you're smart, too, woulda sent him to a clinic rather than a hospital." She'd probably still be on that laptop she was clinging to, tracking his ass, if she wasn't afraid the light would give her away.

"So you just wait for ol' Mac to clean up the evidence a li'l, then we'll take off outta here, find Bozer, and get the two of you to exfil, safe and sound. That work for you?"

Riley hugged the laptop a little tighter, then flinched as a car door slammed shut.

She didn't seem to have any response to the approaching footsteps, though, and Jack looked up to find Mac had returned. He was still up on the road above and made no effort to jump down with them. Instead, he was flexing his right hand, open and closed again.

"You get that door shut in time?"

Mac's eyes shifted, then, from his hand to Jack's face, and Jack finally did feel the cold. Felt it right in his gut. Mac didn't have to say anything at all, the look in his eyes was unmistakable.

Jack climbed to his feet immediately "What is it."

Mac didn't say anything, still wiggling his fingers, and then he seemed to deflate, just a little bit. "I couldn't shut the door, Jack."

And try as he might, Jack couldn't figure out how that could possibly be the end of the world. Because the look on Mac's face told him it was the end of the world. "It's alright, chief, you been kickin' ass an' takin' names, maybe you just need a second to recharge is all-"

"Yeah, about that," Mac interrupted, but then fell reluctantly silent, and Jack got colder. He hopped up out of the ditch and back into the road, getting a quick read on the situation. Same two cops, one in the car with the suspects, the other nowhere to be seen. Front door of the gun-runner's house was open. There was no other sign of the Romanian's gang.

So they'd find the bodies, so it'd make it harder for Riley to get out unseen. It was inconvenient as hell, but not life or death. Whatever this was about, it wasn't that.

"Talk to me," Jack said quietly, and put a bracing hand on Mac's shoulder.

And it tingled, weirdly, as if his hand might pass right through. Mac flinched, and Jack released him instantly.

"We don't. Recharge." Despite drawing back, Mac's voice was dead steady. "We use whatever energy we've got to interact with the world, and when it's gone, it's gone."

"What?" This, what this looked like – Mac's expression, his voice, the way he looked slightly . . . _filmy_ . . . this was not happening. Couldn't be happening. "Let's not put the wagon before the horse, ol' son, you said it yourself, we're new to this, and you –"

"Yeah, Jack. I do know," his partner interrupted, gently but no less steadily. "It makes sense. If everyone who died could do these sorts of things whenever they wanted, ghosts would be a scientific proof by now." He'd balled his right hand into a fist, and Jack hesitated, then jerked his chin at it.

"Is that . . . hurtin' ya?"

Mac quickly shook his head. "Just tingles a little."

Okay. Okay. This was not the end of the world. They just hadda be careful, make him take a break, and he'd be fine. "So . . . you can't pull any more Casper the Friendly Ghost. No biggie. You just take a back seat, pal, and –"

"Jack, I don't think that's an option," Mac said quickly, balling up his left hand as well. "Like any other electrical field, once you lose enough charge, you lose structural integrity. I, uh," and then he hesitated, and gave Jack the barest smile. "I don't think I'm going to be around much longer. Not in any form you can interact with."

Jack refused to smile back. Smiling back would be accepting that pile of bullshit, giving permission, and the hell he was gonna do that. "Mac, we been through worse, we'll find a way through this. You said – electricity, right?" He gestured at the utility box, tantalizingly close, but his partner was already shaking his head.

"It doesn't work that way -"

"Then – then take mine! Take mine!" He made a grab for Mac's arm, intending to squeeze life, energy, _whatever_ they were back into him, but this time there was no tingle at all. His hand clasped nothing but air, almost like with Riley but-

But emptier.

Mac had started to pull away, but when he realized Jack couldn't touch him anymore, he stopped, and Jack watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed. "I wouldn't accept that even if you could, Jack." His eyes brightened a little, and the wan smile on his face warmed. "Riley and Boze still need you, they still need help, and you can't afford any more – more Caspering. You can't hulk out, you've gotta be very deliberate about what you do-"

He broke off, suddenly, and a little shiver seemed to run through him. Jack reached out for him again, trying to steady him, but his shoulder was no more tangible than the rest of him. Jack could actually see his fingers through Mac's arm.

"Son of a bitch, this really is like that Swayze flick," he muttered, and then his voice cracked and he gave up pretending. "You . . . you promise you ain't hurting?"

Mac nodded quickly, then cleared his throat. Jack honestly couldn't tell if the little glitter near his eye was a tear, or the street light behind him, flickering and coming alive as evening approached.

"Yeah, I promise. It . . . doesn't really feel like much at all," he admitted quietly. "Big improvement over last time."

Jack knew he was supposed to laugh at that. That it was a joke, the kind of morbid joke that he preferred, and he knew why Mac had said it. Knew what he was going to say next. "You know," Jack started, and finally managed that passable chuckle he owed Mac, "I always hoped there'd actually be Death, y'know? The dude, the robe, the scythe, the whole shebang."

". . . because then there'd be something for you to fight," Mac finished. "I wanna say I'm disappointed too, but . . ." He looked around, mostly up at the cloudy sky. "This was more than I expected. More than I could have hoped. Getting to help Boze, help Riley . . ." Mac laughed a little, then quickly dragged a hand down his face. His voice was warm and calm when he spoke again. "Thank you, Jack. Thank you for always having my back."

Jack barked out something that couldn't even pretend to be a laugh. "I think I might be about to let you down there, bud . . ."

He had no doubts about what was next for Mac, and what was next for him. And that was okay. He'd made peace with the fact a long time ago, that him and God might not be on the same page about how to live a good life. But Mac, there was just no question.

But Mac didn't understand that, he just shrugged, and demonstrated how much more transparent he'd gotten, just in those few seconds. "It's the end of the day, Jack, and you're right here. Right where you said you'd be."

"Dammit, Angus, when I said-" Jack cut himself off, because there was no point in anger, not now. ". . . this ain't the end, brother. Oh, I know you don't believe in an afterlife," he continued, barreling over Mac's polite attempt to interrupt, "but believe you me, there's more to it than just this. It's all gonna be okay, man. You'll see."

Mac's smile seemed more solid, somehow, even as he became less so. "Now who's lying?"

Jack couldn't help it. He laughed. A real one this time. "Would'ya rather have, uh, evaporated in worry an' panic?"

Mac rolled his eyes, and Jack thought he'd take the out, take the joke. He didn't. ". . . not really," he finally managed. The smile was firmly in place, his partner seemed determined to project calm acceptance of his fate, but Jack wasn't buying it for a second.

He didn't believe, in Heaven or in God. But he didn't believe in ghosts, either, and here they were. Mac didn't know what was going to happen next. And even though he was thin as a wisp of cloud, Jack could see it, see it in his eyes.

He was scared.

Mac took a breath, to say it, to say goodbye, and Jack pre-empted him by casually nodding, and blowing out his cheeks. Like they were standing on his family's porch in Texas, chewing the fat. "Well, be sure an' tell your mom all about me. Oh, but leave off Cairo, okay? She don't need to know about that – unless she already does. Then just tell 'er it wasn't our finest day."

Mac blinked at him, unaware that a tear had escaped and was rolling down his face. " . . . Jack-"

"It's a good place you're goin', Mac, a real good place," Jack promised him, his voice growing husky. "And if I can follow you there, man, I will. But if I can't – if I can't, you jus' . . . you take care of yourself. Okay?"

Jack gave him a watery smile, and Mac said something that he couldn't quite make out. Then he faded away entirely.

Losing him twice in the same day was too much. Jack sat down on the curb and he cried. He cried for himself, for the unbearable pain of that loss, and he cried for all the lost opportunities, the lost lightsabers, the lost _light_. It took him a few minutes to get control of himself again, to get back on mission, and in the intervening time, a third squad car appeared. So, they'd definitely wandered down to the basement, then.

Coroner and detectives wouldn't be far behind. If Riley was going to get out, the opportunities wouldn't be getting better from here.

He just had to figure out a way to tell her so.

Jack forced himself onto his feet, mopped his face, and moved slowly back down into the ditch only to find Riley already halfway out of her culvert. She was wet and muddy, but she'd stopped crying, and clearly had figured out for herself that the going wasn't gonna be getting any better from here. She stayed low in the ditch, trying to get a position on the officers and vehicles, and the first cruiser, containing the gunrunner and his goon, finally rolled away. The other two squadcars were empty, and the second guy had even been dumb enough to leave the door open.

The first cruiser wasn't even quite out of sight before Riley darted quietly up out of the ditch, ducking as she hurried to the second car. Jack had half a thought that she'd boost it; if anyone could turn off a LoJack it was Riley, and besides, the cops weren't exactly the enemy here. But instead, her eyes raked over every item in the cab, and she snatched the cop's mobile off its dock.

And then she turned around and walked – fairly quickly, but not unreasonably so – down the street.

Jack watched her for a moment, not quite sure he could believe what he was seeing, and when she didn't falter at all, and walked like a woman with a destination firmly in mind, he followed her.

"Riles . . . there's a car fulla gang members gonna be drivin' up any second-"

And there was no Mac to break the car. Not a second time.

Mac hadn't even told him how he'd done it in the first place.

But Riley didn't continue her ill-advised public march for long. As soon as she got to the street corner she took a right, and Jack realized they were only a block away from some kinda park. And that was where Riley unerringly led him, into the park, away from street traffic. She glanced up at a couple CCTV cameras, but they looked old and mildewed, and once she was deep enough into the park, she grabbed a bench and popped open the laptop. She'd already cracked the phone, and Jack sighed and stood sentry behind her while she did whatever she was doing.

"Come on, come on," she urged the thing, under her breath, and Jack's attention sharpened as a couple wandered ever closer to Riley's bench, via one of the park's many bark-covered walkways. It was an okay park, but there weren't many working lamps, and it was long past sunset, and cloudy besides. Not a safe place for a beautiful young woman to be, especially alone.

Then again, safe was relative. Neither cops nor gun runners were going to look for her here. It was still cold, though, and getting colder, and Riley wrapped her soggy, useless denim jacket more tightly around her.

"Dammit," she swore softly, huddling around the laptop half to take comfort in the warmth, half to hide the light from the monitor. The couple, utterly unaware a ghost was standing guard over Riley, eventually passed by, without incident. Riley barely even glanced at them.

"Honey . . . I know we trained you better than this." She only had a few more months than Bozer did under her belt, but she was street smart, and prison smart besides. A shivering young woman with a nice piece of tech alone in a park at night was begging for the kind of trouble she really couldn't deal with right now.

"Where did you drop him off when you cancelled, you useless assface," she growled, manipulating a map. "Where did you cancel . . .?"

She was trying to track where Bozer's Uber had gone. Since it apparently had not completed its scheduled journey.

She gave a little disgusted snort, then, and made to close the laptop, but she stopped abruptly, and pulled the map back up. Riley traced a route with a muddy, broken fingernail, then closed the laptop with a sharp snap, and did something to the cop's mobile phone.

"Y'know, you could just call Matty," Jack suggested mildly, and Riley promptly tucked the phone in her pocket and took off generally due east.

". . . or, you could totally ignore me, which is whatcha'd do if you could hear me anyway," he finished glumly, and trailed along after her. Being dead had only been fun when he'd had someone to talk to. Now, though, he was starting to realize that it was going to get very, very lonely.

Riley took them out of the park, back into a residential neighborhood, but this one was slightly more upscale than the last, and it dumped them pretty quickly onto a commercial street. She marched past the convenience stores like they weren't there, didn't stop to get herself so much as a bottle of water even though he knew she'd had nothing to eat or drink since they'd been taken – however many hours ago it'd been. Hell, maybe yesterday for all he knew. She only stopped for traffic, checking street signs occasionally but otherwise looking like any other pedestrian.

Any other wet, muddy pedestrian, with matted, unkempt hair, an obvious cut on her mouth, and smudged eyeliner. If the roving gang happened to cruise by, the odds were not in her favor.

But Riley's luck, or maybe it was her fury, held. She must have taken then over two miles - and it was only after the first had gone by entirely that he realized she was still wearing her shoes, and if he wasn't a ghost, his feet would have been torn to pieces by then – before the road started looking a little more upscale commercial. She cut through an alley between two apartment buildings, checking the GPS on the phone for only maybe the fourth or fifth time, and she led them out to a four story stone building, older, with all of its windows staring down at them, black and empty.

Riley stared back, up at the second or third floor, and then she crossed the street and started trying to find a way inside.

Jack stood nearby, arms folded over his chest, eyeing it. Too downtown to have been permanently abandoned, but there was no sign of life at all. None. Not even a homeless population, so either the area was well policed, or the building was only recently vacated. Every door Riley tried was locked, and after the fourth she growled a few choice words and huffed, backing up a few steps to stand almost shoulder to shoulder with Jack.

He cleared his throat and indicated the windows at sidewalk level. "That's your best bet, darlin'. Break the top middle pane of glass and twist the lock."

And then it occurred to him, quite suddenly, that he ought to be able to do that least that. Clearly stopping cars was on the no-no list, but one little pane of glass?

Jack stood there another few seconds, seriously considering pulling a Casper, and reflected headlights glinted off the window. Jack turned, noting the passing car, and the one behind it. He might not have recognized it at all, silver four-doors were a dime a dozen all over Europe, but the big, bald head in the rear passenger window was more than enough to jog his memory.

"C'mon, you gotta be _kidding_ me! Really?!" he snarled at the retreating car, and hurried over to the window in question. They might not have spotted her yet, but if they took another lap it was a done deal.

How in the fuck could they have tailed her? It defied belief. Jack channeled that righteous fury and aimed the ball of his bare foot at the glass. And damned if he didn't pass right through it.

"Son of a bitch! Mac, buddy, how in the hell were you _doin'_ this shit?!" He'd said –

He'd said that Jack had been the one to tell him. But tell him what?!

"Okay," he grumbled to himself, casting a quick glance over to make sure he still had tabs on Riley. "What did you do, Jack ol' boy. The first thing you did – oh yeah, kicked that gun away from Boze. That was a good one," he allowed. "Next up, bodychecked that goon into the doorframe, but that was a damn accident."

And yet-

It seemed like Mac had figured it out after that.

Jack 'accidentally' waggled his foot through the glass pane, but nothing happened, and he made a face at the uncooperative stuff.

"Fine, whatever. Third thing was . . ."

Riley appeared, directly in front of him, and whipped off her damp denim jacket. Then she slapped it against the glass, winced a little, and put her shoe right through it. The jacket did somewhat muffle the sound of the break, and she used the fabric to wipe the sharp fragments off the frame before she delicately reached in, brushed the shards from the lock, and turned it.

Jack just stared at her, totally speechless, and Riley, in turn, totally ignored him and slipped inside the building.

Getting inside was even easier for him; he just walked through the wall and hopped down to the floor. Knee didn't even twinge, which was kinda a nice change. The inside was just as dark as advertised, and Riley hesitated, then moved further into the hallways, and used the cop's cellphone as a flashlight, dimly illuminating long, empty halls with uniform doors.

Some kinda bureaucratic building, then. Government, maybe. The only signs still there were all in Hungarian, or maybe German, but he was better with spoken language anyway and it didn't matter.

"Riles, hon . . . what are we doin' here?"

And she finally answered him.

"Boze," she whispered loudly into the silence, listening to it echo. "Boze . . . you in here?"

Boze . . .

Jack couldn't help himself. "Well, what in the hell stupid kinda question is that?" he demanded. "Why would Bozer be in some abandoned-ass government building, like, two blocks away from actual civilization –"

. . . why would two injured, frightened clandestine agents, unsure of protocol and without coms, agree to meet in an empty, relatively safe place, probably within blocks of the US Consulate.

This is what Bozer and Riley had been doing behind that house, while Riley was summoning her Uber army. Figuring out a safe place to meet up where the gun-runners wouldn't easily find them, to regroup and figure out how to approach the Consulate. The Uber Riley had originally ordered might very well have been ordered to take them directly there.

This had been Riley's Plan B. In case they got split up, or something happened.

His chest swelled up a little, and this time Jack didn't even question it. Beating heart or not, he could feel pride, love, admiration for his little badass agent. She was doing everything she could to get herself and Boze out, to get the intel to Phoenix, to complete the mission.

She just had the order wrong.

"Your life is worth a hundred times what that drive is," he told her softly. "Me an' Mac, that wasn't to save the mission, Ri. That was to save the two of you."

She didn't hear him. "Bozer!" she called, a little louder, and crept her way further into the building.

They'd entered on the lower level, east side, and Riley picked her careful way through what Jack could openly admit was a fairly spooky old building to a central marble staircase, ubiquitous to government buildings the world over. She climbed them quickly, bringing them up to the first floor, to the main entrance and an unimpeded view of the street outside. There was more glass here in the lobby than anywhere else, the white marble floors were brightly illuminated by the streetlights outside, and there at the stoplight was the silver four-door car.

And there in plain sight was Riley, holding a goddamn flashlight.

She pressed it to her leg instantly, but the damage was done, and she realized it when the four doors flew open, and very large skinheads all piled out. " _Shit_!" she hissed, darting to the next staircase and flying up it like she was Casper herself. Jack hesitated, torn between taking care of business and following her to make sure she stayed safe, and staying by her side won out. He took the stairs two at a time, hot on her trail, when the main door shattered, and a male voice bellowed into the lobby.

"Jack ol' son, you better figure out how to whoop some ass, and you better damn well do it now," he told himself sternly, pausing to look over the railing at the four men entering the lobby. Somewhere, an alarm was keening, but that was cold comfort. These guys could get their hands on her and have her back in that car in under a minute. Two of them headed up the stairs after them, and the other two headed in the opposite directly, to head them off.

"Oh, you done pissed me off now, boys." Jack watched the second pair another moment, getting a bead on their weaponry, then continued after Riley.

Riley, to her credit, didn't spend any time in the hallway. As soon as she found an open door she was through it, closing it almost silently behind her, and muffled her breathing as much as she was able, taking stock of the dark room. It was some kind of secretary's office plus muckity-muck setup, and basic furniture was still there. Riley hurried from the secretary's office into the main one, and as soon as she spied the door on the far side, she tried it, which led predictably enough to the next office.

In this way Riley made her way about halfway down the building, parallel with the main hallway, closing every door behind her – some right in Jack's face – until she came to one that had a half-glass door back to the darkened hallway. Riley slipped the laptop out from under her arm, set it on the desk, and opened it, with the screen facing the chair, like she intended to sit there and use it.

She made sure the screen was on, and bright enough that it might be seen from the hallway, and then she hustled into the next room, shutting the door softly behind her.

Leaving it – and the promise of the intel – in an empty office. She was hoping to gather them all in one place and slip out behind them, just like she and Boze had tried earlier.

"Good girl," Jack murmured approvingly, and tried to crack his knuckles, pleased when he was actually able to.

The two that had come up to this floor with her didn't take long to find the room, like moths to a flame. In this case, extremely tall, meaty, hairless moths, but as far as Jack was concerned, the analogy held. He let them enter, and they left the hallway door behind them wide open. Jack could very well imagine Riley, two doors down, huddled in a closet or behind a desk, listening for the faintest sign that her diversion was working.

It made him grin. "Oh, sweetheart, I gotchu," he assured the room at large, and slammed the door closed.

And by god, that door _slammed_. It tingled, just like it had when he'd body-checked the lieutenant, and those skinheads jumped about three feet into the air.

"Damn I wish I could make you fuckers hear me," Jack told them, baring his teeth. They'd both pulled back to the desk, staring uneasily at the door with their guns drawn, and Jack sauntered into the space between them, his dead heart singing.

"Boo," he taunted, and plunged his fist into the laptop.

It didn't tingle so much as tickle, and the laptop exploded around his hand in a ball of light and sparks. Both men shouted in alarm and jumped back, and Jack poked around in the laptop bits. They still had some electricity in them, maybe from the battery, so he was able to make them continue spitting and sparking, jumping across the desk. One of the skinheads – Jack decided to call him Tweedle Dee – had fallen against the wall and looked legitimately scared. Tweedle Dum simply swore and beat on the smoldering sleeve of his white supremacist tee. He growled something – in Hungarian, of course – and Jack mocked him as the two of them tried to decide what to do next.

It might not have been what Riley had in mind, but on the off chance the intel really had been on that laptop, it sure as hell wasn't anymore. And these guys were, as Jack liked to say, _spooked_.

His right hand was still a little tingly, and Jack stretched it out a few times before he realized he was doing exactly what Mac had done. His hand still looked . . . fine, it looked totally fine, not translucent or anything, and Jack shrugged it off and walked through the door into the hallway, checking to see if the pyrotechnics and yelling had attracted the other two.

He didn't see anyone else in the hallway, and after about thirty seconds Jack got a little antsy, afraid that Riley might prematurely leave her cover. He turned, balled up his fist and punched the glass window in the door, as hard as he could.

It shattered in a super-satisfying way. If he'd done that while he was still alive, his hand would have been macerated, but it still looked and felt as solid as it always had. Didn't even twinge.

Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum were now both pointing weapons at the door, and Jack walked back through it, taking the time to appreciate the glass shards he'd managed to knock about ten feet into the room. Tweedle Dee was still cowering against the wall, but Tweedle Dum was approaching the door, sure that someone must have taken a shot at them.

It was almost too easy. "Didn't anybody ever teach you not to walk downrange until after the cease fire's called?" he chided the a-hole, and sized up the trembling Tweedle Dee's grip on his gun.

A little nudge to the right, and he might be convinced to shoot his own guy in the back.

The gunfire was likely to spook Riley – and Jack hated that part of it – but he still came up next to Tweedle Dee, waited for Tweedle Dum to walk basically into his sightline, and he reached out and grasped the firearm, squeezing Tweedle Dee's hand. The man shouted, the gun went off, and Tweedle Dum went down with a bullet in his right ass cheek.

Confident that he'd essentially eliminated two of Riley's four attackers – Dee was going to have to help Dum outta the building before the alarm company was able to dispatch police to the address – Jack headed again back into the main hall. Maybe the laptop and glass hadn't been audible a floor down, but that gunshot sure as hell should have been.

He caught the tail end of what looked like a shape disappearing down the dark hallway, then a little bit of light as a stairwell doorway was cracked open, and the shadow slipped through.

Way too thin to be one of those meatheads.

Jack started after her at a dead run. _Dammit, Ri, if you just coulda waited sixty seconds -_

He made the stairwell maybe twenty seconds after her, through the closed door, slipped on the dusty marble tiles, and just about slid right into the gap between the flights of stairs. Jack actually fell back on his ass with an undignified yelp to stop the slide, only realizing a second later that he probably could have taken that fall without issues.

Or maybe he would have fallen through the floor and into the ground and stayed there.

_Better not chance that one unless we can avoid it, Jack ol' boy._

From his vantage point, sitting between the railings along the stairwell like a damn five year old, Jack could see activity at the bottom of it, heading up, and there was Riley, halfway down the flight, reconsidering her options. A male voice was shouting, but it was echoing, and too faint to tell whether it was coming from above or below.

Whoever it was sounded pissed, and Jack didn't begrudge Riley reversing direction and racing past him, heading up to the third floor.

At least she'd had the good sense to at least _try_ to go down the first time. Why everyone in movies ran up, where they were guaranteed to be trapped, he'd never understand –

Jack hefted himself up without the help of the bannister and waited for the skinhead. He was also taking the stairs two at a time, and clearly had a bead on Riley.

Time to see if these guys bounced.

Jack stood his ground and waited with his right arm outstretched, grinning in anticipation of the clothesline he was about to pull off, and the skinhead passed right through it like it wasn't there. Jack was after him like a shot, silently swearing.

 _God_ dammit! _What the fuck did I just do different than I did in that stupid office?!_

Riley was fast but also tired and cold, and she made it up to the third floor landing only half a flight ahead of the guy. She'd also decided to take advantage of that height, preparing herself to kick him back down the stairs, and the very bald gun-runner slowed, his hands empty and out to the side. He was speaking Hungarian, but sounded nice and calm. The message was pretty clear; he was peddling the same 'I'm not gonna hurt you, just come with me' bullshit she'd heard from their Romanian ringleader.

Based on her expression, she wasn't buying.

Jack reached out above him and grabbed the guy's ankle, intent on faceplanting him on the stairs, but this time there was no tingle, and no response from the skinhead. He took another stair, still wheedling to her like she was a hapless teenage, and Riley planted herself and got ready.

And while he was stupid enough to try to con her so blatantly, he wasn't dumb enough to simply get kicked down the stairs by a buck twenty American. He feigned taking the bait, and she gave ground, just like she'd been trained, and then her left foot lashed out. He caught it despite Jack literally standing inside his chest, then tried to pull her towards him, and she gave up and kicked her right leg up, using her caught left to pull herself into close enough range to get at least light contact with his face.

She landed on her left hip – and would certainly have a bruise – but she'd succeeded in getting free and started scrabbling back towards the hallway door. But light contact with a beef bus wasn't gonna cut it, and the skinhead reached for the .45 he had tucked in his waistband. He was tired of playing games, and he was running outta time.

Riley had scooted nearly back to the door, but her soggy shoes had no traction on the marble, and she only had eyes for the gun that was pointing right at her. The skinhead growled something in Hungarian as he topped the last step, towering to his full height, and Jack could see the actual moment that Riley realized she had no way out. Something in her eyes closed down, just a little, closed like she'd been that day in the interrogation room at the correctional facility.

It wasn't surrender – she was still plenty rebellious, and angry, and all those things.

It was giving up hope.

And he would be damned in Hell before he let that look stay on her face one more _second._

Jack didn't even think about it. He disarmed the guy with a strike that also broke his wrist, kicked the fallen weapon in Riley's general direction, and punched him right in the nose, fist closed, the way you were _never_ supposed to do. The guy's shiny bald head snapped back and he windmilled frantically, trying not to fall down the stairs. Jack helpfully fisted the front of the guy's white supremacist tee, catching him.

It was the first time he'd actually held on to anything, and it made his hand ache a little, almost like, for a split second, it was a real hand, and he was really there. "You ain't _touchin_ ' her," he snarled at the wide-eyed gun-runner, and then he hurled him down the stairs and against the railing.

Just as he'd intended, the overbalanced six foot muscle suit tumbled over the low bannister to fall onto the flight of stairs below. He left a red stain where his head encountered the marble stairs, and then slithered bonelessly to the second floor landing.

Jack took a deep breath, expecting to be winded, but he found that he didn't feel any different at all. And he didn't care. All he cared was that he turned around to find Riley pressed up against the double doors, the gun held tight in her hands, pointing directly at his chest.

He froze on instinct, forgetting that it couldn't hurt him, and Riley didn't lower it. The barrel was even held steady, while her voice wasn't even close.

" . . . J-Jack?"

He blinked at her, then gave her a slow grin. The gun didn't lower.

"Easy, darlin'. It's just me," he told her softly. Riley struggled to her feet, the gun gradually drooping towards the marble floor, but her wide, frightened eyes never left his face.

"Riles . . ." He hesitated, then took a step towards her. "Can you . . . see me?"

She didn't respond, didn't raise the weapon, and he risked another step. Then another. Her eyes stayed locked on place he'd been standing, holding the skinhead teetering on the stairs. He waved a hand tentatively in front of her face, but she didn't react.

The crushing disappointment he felt was worse than a bullet would've been. She couldn't see him.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he told the landing, as she finally let the gun drop completely to her side, and covered her mouth with her other hand. Her eyes were still wide and wild, and Jack couldn't help it. He reached out and gently stroked a lock of her matted hair.

His fingertips tingled, and she flinched back into the door. He was standing right in front of her, he could see his own damn reflection in her startled eyes, but they never focused on him.

" . . . Jack . . .?" she whispered.

The grin was easier this time. "Yeah, sweetheart, it's me," he confirmed, daring to touch the corner of her mouth with his thumb, like he could somehow soothe the cut away. Again, it seemed like he made contact; she jumped a little, then pressed a shaking hand over his in total disbelief.

"I gotcha, Riles. I'm right here."

She scrabbled at his hand on her chin, as if trying to grab it, but it didn't seem like she could, because a sob suddenly exploded out of her throat, and she reached for the air in front of her, headed unerringly for the neck of his muscle shirt, knowing exactly how high and how far away it would be if he was really standing there. The door to the third floor hallway behind her suddenly exploded open, causing her to yelp and bring up the gun, and Jack turned on the enemy before he registered the black uniform, the tac gear.

The M6, he clocked it a little faster, and knocked the barrel off sight before he even though about it.

These weren't skinheads. This was Hungarian SWAT.

The officer flinched back himself with a menacing shout, assuming Riley had somehow made contact and reacquiring her to fire, and Jack honestly didn't believe it himself when the next person crowding out of the door was Wilt Bozer.

"Wait wait wait!" he yelled, even as Riley hit the wall behind her, with nowhere else to backpeddle, targeting the man targeting her. "That's Riley! That's Riley!"

There were a couple more shouts – and two more black-clad special assault troops – on the landing before they got it sorted out, and Riley awkwardly raised her hands – gun included – into the air. And Bozer, bless his warm, clueless, innocent little heart, then walked right in front of those rifle barrels and bear-hugged her.

Once they got the gun away from her – and without a fight – the team continued down the stairs, leaving one man on the landing with Bozer and Riley. It took Jack longer than it should have to recognize the strap of a sling across Bozer's back, and the fact that he was only hugging her with one arm, and he wasn't sure Riley had even noticed yet. She was clinging to him like her life depended on it, her face in his shoulder, and Jack resisted the urge to get in on the goodness.

They probably wouldn't appreciate it.

"Riley, are you okay!? I'm sorry I wasn't here, when you didn't show up I was afraid they'd caught you, an' I wasn't sure what to do so I went straight to the consulate an'-"

Jack tuned out the rest of Bozer's rushed explanation – what he'd heard was enough. Boze had gone to the consulate, probably spilled his guts to the guard in the guard house, gotten entry, phoned home, and Matilda Webber had stepped in. That explained the very well-armed group appearing rather than the alarm company's regular guards. And of course Bozer would insist on going with.

It also explained why the gun-runners had been prowling the neighborhood, knowing the two US agents were most likely to hit the consulate for help and hoping to get lucky.

The one he'd left on the stairs hadn't gotten lucky. He'd gotten dead. And even knowing that he was absolutely adding insult to injury, committing sins even as a ghost, Jack couldn't scrounge up one single scrap of remorse.

If God didn't want him protecting his kids, then He shouldn't'a made him a ghost in the first place.

It took tac less than five minutes to finish clearing the building, and they did not require any supernatural assistance. Jack stayed glued Bozer and Riley, providing overwatch until they were hustled into a car. Mac's prediction of Jack's inability to ride in a car was proven depressingly accurate, and Jack broke into a slow jog as the black sedan took off.

He hated running when he was alive, but now that he was dead, it wasn't so bad. His knee never hurt, and he never got out of breath. Besides, he knew that car was only going a couple blocks.

By the time Jack caught up, walked through the gate - a couple times, actually, just to screw with the guard, since apparently it did something to the video surveillance and freaked that guy the hell out – and found his way through the consulate to the suite where Bozer and Riley were being kept, Riley had had an opportunity to clean herself up a little and swap her filthy, damp clothes for US Army-themed sweats. She'd tied her hair back out of her face, revealing the bruises and the cut, and a woman Jack could only assume was the consulate nurse on call was treating her.

Bozer was hovering nearby, seemingly wanting to sit but not able to make his butt actually contact any surface long enough to accomplish it. After about three more passes of his pacing, the nurse turned and fixed him with a decidedly mothering look.

"Sit," she commanded, with a very endearing Eastern European accent. "Or I will glue you to that chair." She then waved the skin-safe adhesive she was using to seal Riley's cut at him.

Bozer held up his only free hand in surrender, then came and set himself a little fearfully on the opposite side of the couch from Riley. She was getting her face glued, so she couldn't do more than look at him out of the corner of her eye, but she did reach out her right hand, and find his left halfway. That seemed to be enough to ground both of them, and the nurse was able to finish up without further incident. She put away her kit and gave Bozer another appraising look – apparently she was responsible for the sling, because Bozer pulled back a little – and then gestured at a cart full of goodies that was sitting tantalizingly close to the sofa.

"You should both eat. Keep up your strength. Your jet will not be here for another hour."

"You should listen to her," a very familiar voice added dryly, making both the agents on the couch start.

The TV across from them was equipped with videoconferencing gear, and Matty was there large as life on the screen. She was in the war room, with Carter and her assistant – Jack could never remember the Asian chick's name – and the director looked utterly unruffled, despite the fact that it had to be close to ten am in Los Angeles and she couldn't have slept a wink. She had a tablet in her hand, but her eyes were on her agents.

The nurse quickly took her leave, shutting the double doors quietly behind her, and once she was gone, Bozer ducked his head. "I'm sorry, I should have called you-"

"You did exactly what you should have done, by accompanying our allies to retrieve your teammate and fellow agent," Matty cut him off, not unkindly. "It's the ambassador's job to run logistics, not yours. I need the two of you to stay together until exfil gets to the Consulate, so you're exactly where you need to be."

Riley had jumped up off the couch as soon as she'd heard Matty's voice, and didn't look like she planned to get comfortable any time soon. "Matty, we have to go back –"

"It's already been taken care of." Matty's voice was velvet steel. "Agents MacGyver and Dalton will be waiting on the tarmac when the plane touches down, and you two will accompany them home."

Despite how kind Jack knew Webber was being, and how direct and factual was the only way to be kind in a situation like this, it hurt his now-cold heart to watch Riley try and fail to find some way to protest. To insist that she needed to be there. When that proved unsuccessful, she said the only other thing that could have hurt him worse.

"It was my fault," she told the television. "It was my fault, Mac tried to tell me but I-"

"Agent Davis, we'll debrief when you touch down." A little less velour, a touch more metal. Even if the consulate was American soil, the walls could – and did – have ears. "We had incomplete intelligence. Had we known that the Rossz Farkas were in the country and also after the weapons cache, the mission would have been scrubbed. From the moment you entered that hotel, there is nothing that any of you could have done differently that would have changed the outcome. I'm just grateful you're both still alive and in one piece. We've received the electronic copy of the inventory that you recovered, and Hungarian intelligence has been informed. Your exfil team will be on prem in a little under an hour. Your codeword is persimmons."

Riley subsided but did not appear comforted by Matty's words – which Jack could attest were five hundred percent accurate – and after a moment, the director took pity on the two exhausted, grief-stricken agents in front of her.

"I know it feels like you made mistakes, like you failed. But the important thing is that you kept your heads and you protected each other. Mac and Jack would be _so proud_ of the two of you. I know I am."

"Damn right," Jack agreed solemnly.

"Rest and try to eat something. We'll have you back in Los Angeles as soon as we can."

Bozer eventually nodded, and the screen went blank. Riley wrapped her arms around herself and wandered over to the consulate window, the one overlooking the back of the property. Bozer stared after her, a hundred questions on his bruised and swollen face, but eventually, his attention turned to the cart overflowing with snacks, cheeses, lunchmeat, and spreads. He ultimately selected a bag of plain potato chips, and the sound of the bag being torn open was almost deafening in the silence that had descended on them.

"It wasn't your fault," he declared, his voice only a touch uncertain, and then he balanced the bag of chips in his sling, and popped one in his mouth.

Riley, by her window, didn't even twitch.

The chip seemed almost unreasonably crunchy, and Bozer swallowed and eyed the bag another second before he also wandered over to the window. "You weren't even there, you were somewhere else. I heard Mac tell 'em-"

"I _was_ there," she snarled, taking both Boze and Jack by surprise. "I was standing _right there_ , Bozer, right there when they-" She cut herself off, then went to bite her lip before wincing, and touching the glued cut with the tip of her tongue. "He tried to . . . and I couldn't even get to the gun. I just . . . I just stood there . . . I just stood there," she repeated in hollow disbelief.

Wilt wasn't sure what to do with that piece of information. He rocked back on his heels a little, as if she'd actually knocked him off balance, but he recovered quickly enough, and stared at her reflection in the glass for a long time.

"Well, at least he wasn't alone," he finally noted, his voice thick. "He told 'em if they stopped beatin' on me, he'd tell 'em where the drive was. They took him away. After that, they left me alone. Until I heard the shots . . ." He trailed off. "He did that for me. So they'd stop hittin' _me_."

Riley shook her head once, then quickly wiped her face. "Jack was already . . . I couldn't do anything."

"They were together, then?" Weirdly, it sounded like that made Bozer feel a little better. "I didn't know if maybe they left Jack at the hotel . . ."

Riley shook her head again. Jack resisted the almost overwhelming urge to throw his arms over both their shoulders.

"You dumb chowderheads . . . it was neither of your faults and I hope Matty makes damn sure you two know that before all's said and done."

"I can't believe he's actually . . . gone," Wilt said slowly. "I keep expectin' . . . like, I know it's stupid –"

"The door to open, and the two of them to come tearing in here like frat boys after a kegger?" Riley suggested, her voice wavering only slightly.

_Oh honey, if only we could._

Wilt nodded. "Maybe it's the pain meds, but . . . when I was waitin' for you, I couldn't get into the building, all the doors were locked. There was no real good place to hide but a couple'a trash cans. These guys kept drivin' by the alley, I thought for sure they were gonna stop an' – the trash can beside me just – just caught fire. All by itself. I coulda sworn – I know it how it sounds –"

Jack found himself grinning ruefully. Damned if it didn't sound like their boy. If he hadn't watched Mac disappear with his own eyes hours before that could have happened, he would have believed it too.

"Afraid that one's just a coincidence, brother. But he woulda done it if he coulda." Knowing Mac, maybe he really had found a way to work one last miracle.

Or maybe – just maybe - he'd found a way to work his first _real_ miracle.

Riley had been watching Bozer out of the corner of her eye as he talked, but now she turned towards him – just a little – and gave him such a long look that he started backpeddling.

"It was prolly just a cigarette butt or somethin', but the smoke ended up gettin' the fire department, and that's when I decided to head here-"

"No, I mean – I know what you mean," Riley rushed to head him off. "About . . . about it feeling like . . . they're still here."

It was enough to make Jack himself turn around and inspect the room. There was no grinning blond in it, ghost or otherwise, but he had said that he wouldn't be in a – how'd he put it? A form he could interact with.

". . . bud?" Jack asked the air, half daring to hope.

"In the – the building, I saw . . . it couldn't have been what it looked like." Riley didn't sound like she knew who she was trying to convince. "It was like . . . Jack was right there. The guy just – he, like, dropped his gun and just fell down the stairs. By himself."

The two of them let their last words hang heavy in the air, but no Mac turned up to reassure either one of them.

"If anyone could do it . . . it'd be Mac and Jack," Bozer agreed softly, then gave a half-laugh and rubbed his swollen face on his shoulder.

At least Bozer had gotten _that_ right.

It took a little while, but the three of them pulled themselves together, and Bozer eventually even coaxed a couple potato chips into Riley. The crunch and salt seemed to remind her that she hadn't had anything to eat or drink in over twenty-four hours, and she downed a half liter of water before there was a knock on the door, and a person Jack didn't recognize gestured for them to follow.

This time, when they were led outside, it was to a three car convoy, and Jack was pretty sure he knew exactly what – or more accurately, who – was in the first car. Seeing as it was the kind of limo that was actually a hearse. When Jack tried to poke his head in to confirm it, he smashed his face right into the side of the car. No one seemed to have heard it, but Jack rubbed his smarting forehead, and then laid his hand flat on the glass of the car.

And he did it, in the same way he felt solid ground under his feet. It didn't tingle. It felt normal.

A little unnerved, Jack decided to climb into the car – and only the driver's side door was open, so he was forced to slide into the middle so as not to be seated _inside_ the driver – and he was able to put his butt on the seat. Furthermore, it actually stayed there when the car pulled away from the consulate, and Jack was somehow able to ride with the silent driver from the consulate to the airport. He didn't dare move, didn't so much as breathe, but he kept his eyes on the rear view mirror, ensuring that Riley and Bozer's car remained behind them.

Once they hit the tarmac, he slipped out behind the driver – and the driver then rudely ducked through his chest to retrieve the clipboard Jack had apparently been sitting on – and nothing happened. Yet Jack could still reach out and rap his knuckles on the top of the car.

No one noticed.

"Okay, is _anyone_ gonna explain the rules?" he complained aloud, kind of hoping he'd hear a familiar chuckle or scoff, but it didn't happen. Jack was left standing on the tarmac while a Phoenix tac team he actually recognized hurried Riley and Bozer aboard the jet.

Hesitantly, Jack followed. He put his bare foot on the stairwell – and it held, exactly like every other stairwell he'd encountered. He was able to get on the jet without a problem.

He also noticed that while Phoenix tac had been keeping Riley and Bozer's attention, two crates had been loaded into the baggage compartment.

Their bodies.

Maybe that was the trick. He could stick around because his body was nearby.

But that made no sense, his damn body had been in the basement and he still had only been able to land a punch here and there on the bad guys. He'd been miles from it when he'd whooped ass on the guys attacking Riley.

. . . attacking Riley . . . and attacking Boze.

His first hit had been when that goon had been about to shoot Bozer. Mac's first had been when he'd grabbed the doorframe trying to get to Riley. And poking the guy in the brain when he'd been about to shoot Riley.

And again, Jack had body-checked that guy into the doorframe trying to get line of sight on Riley and Boze, to make sure neither one had gotten shot. Mac had punched, tackled, and even disabled a damn _car_ trying to save Boze from getting tailed and killed.

It wasn't focusing on the thing you were doing, the bad guy, the act you were trying to prevent. It had nothing to do with how angry or scared you were. It was focusing on the _why_ you needed to do it.

_You're the one who told me. Showed me, actually._

And then Jack found himself starting to laugh.

He _had_ shown Mac how to do it. He'd shown Mac a thousand times before he'd ever kicked that gun away from the goon about to shoot Boze.

He was able to do it because he loved the person he wanted it to happen for, wanted to protect that person that he loved. And of _course_ Mac would be a natural at that.

Jack was still smiling to himself when the captain locked down the cabin, and they started to taxi. The going up didn't feel like anything at all, his ears didn't even pop, but a little tingly feeling returned, and Jack took the seat across the aisle from Riley, and watched her settle in. Watched over her as she nodded and closed herself off to tac, to anyone who wanted anything from her, until they got the message and left her alone, there in tech hub of the plane, typing away on a laptop. Working, like she'd done after that Organization schmoe had nearly killed her.

Jack watched her keep typing, silently crying, until he just couldn't take it anymore. He was a little afraid touching the monitors might accidentally crash the plane, so he paced to the front, where Bozer had selected the bench along the side of the cabin, that Mac always claimed, and was weeping unabashedly on it, staring at nothing at all.

He could save them from gunrunners, but he couldn't save them from this. Jack sighed, then pinched the bridge of his nose, wracking his brain for some way to comfort them without scaring the shit out of them.

When he opened his eyes, he realized he could see through his own hand.

Mac was right; it didn't feel like much of anything. Just tingly. He opened and closed his hand experimentally a few times, and it still worked, but it felt . . . odd. A little like falling asleep.

He smiled a little, glancing up at the ceiling of the cabin. "You were right, dude. Big improvement over last time." Maybe the flying was taking it out of him, or maybe it was just time. Maybe all ghosts just . . . just faded away with enough time. No one said anything to him, no light appeared and certainly no Whoopi Goldberg, and Jack sighed, then took his usual seat on the jet, which was still sitting empty.

"Hope my ass doesn't fall through," he added, mostly to himself. That'd be a hell of a fall. "You don't owe me anything, big man. You just . . . you do right by him. He's special, that one. He'll take care of the rest."

Mac would keep them safe.

Jack settled into the seat, letting his skull bounce gently on the headrest, and he waited for the end.

"Jack?"

A hand settled onto his shoulder, warm and most certainly solid, and Jack opened his eyes with a shout.

Bozer, to his credit, had already been standing about as far away as he possibly could have and still touch him, and recoiled like he expected Jack to grab him and throw him across the plane. Which Jack almost did. Bozer held up both his hands placatingly.

"Whoa, it's just me-"

Behind Bozer, a slim figure in torn jeans and a Nightwish tee poked her head into view. "Would you two quit it? Mac's still trying to sleep-"

". . . not anymore," a sleepy and slightly grumpy voice floated over, from the general direction of the bench seat.

That was about the time that Jack realized Bozer was holding up both his hands. Neither one was in a sling. Also, his face wasn't swollen, and both his eyes were open.

Wide.

Jack also discovered that he was on his feet, and he held up his own hands, checking that they were empty before he let himself collapse back into his seat. Something tickled his jaw, and Jack reached up to find that it was wet. He drew his fingers back, for some reason expecting to find blood, but the liquid was perfectly clear.

And then everything _else_ became perfectly clear.

Jack scrubbed his face quickly, clearing his throat. On the plane. He was on the plane, en route to a mission in –

In Budapest.

"You finally awake, Jack?"

Jack dropped his hands to his jeans and briskly rubbed them. "Yeah, I'm 'wake, hoss." Then he carefully stretched his tense back. "Listen, Boze –"

"Hey, gimme some creds." Bozer's voice was easy and faux offended. "I know how to wake up sleepin' badasses from bad dreams, okay? Not my first rodeo. You try wakin' up Mac here when he doesn't expect it. Number of times he put me flat on my ass, I shoulda figured out he was a spy _years_ ago –"

Riley was watching them both curiously, finally aware that something had happened. "Is that – why the first time I walked into your house I found Mac –"

"Oh, you mean when I was showin' my bro some moves?" Bozer leapt into the world's best known and least useful fighting pose, which did not impress her in any way. Jack silently appreciated that Boze was trying to take the attention off him, and it was at least temporarily working.

"Because you were working on that movie script, and Jack and Mac had just gotten back from North Korea." It seemed like the first time she'd put that together, because Bozer looked crestfallen, and Mac appeared in the aisle, his hair askew but his eyes bright and alert.

Bozer's antics notwithstanding, he knew exactly what had happened.

"You okay, old man?" Riley turned her unimpressed look his way, not letting him off the hook, and Jack gave her a broad smile.

"You know me."

"He died," Mac announced glibly, then ran a hand through his hair, frowning when he figured out exactly how cattywampus it was. Jack gave his partner a deeply hurt look – mostly feigned – and Mac offered his trademark shrug. Bozer nodded like an old sage. Only Riley seemed to be taken by surprise.

"He . . . died," she repeated, like she hadn't heard correctly, or they were idiots.

"Yeah." Mac decided to take the seat diagonal from Jack. "Jack dies in all his dreams."

"Not all of 'em." He wasn't sure why he sounded so defensive about it.

The blond gave a tired snort. "Name five."

Jack opened his mouth to do so – and he had a really good one, about that blonde they'd met in Madagascar – before Mac realized his error, and hastily waved his hand in the air.

"I take it back. Just – take my word for it. Jack dies in his dreams. A lot."

"And you know that you're one of his peeps if _you_ die in his dreams too," Bozer added. "How many have I died in now, Jack?"

He had to stop and think about it a second, and in that time, Riley's gaze had settled back on him. "Wait – you dream about _us_ dying?"

"Yeah." Mac had finally won the battle with his hair – mostly. "The first time it happened to me was back in Afghanistan. He acted super weird all day, it wasn't until we were on the way back to base that I got it out of him –"

Jack fixed his partner with his best no-nonsense look. "Now that was a bad one, chief, and I didn't wanna worry you, bein' new an' all –"

"New to . . . dying in your dreams?"

Jack transferred the look to Riley. "New to the sandbox," he clarified. "Look, it just goes to show how much you three reckless chuckleheads make me worry. You see all this?" He gestured dramatically to his scalp. "You think all these grey hairs just grew themselves?"

Thee pairs of eyes blinked at him, and Jack mentally congratulated himself for effectively redirecting them. Mac wasn't the only master of that game.

It was Bozer, predictably, who responded. "They did grow themselves, Jack, and you better be grateful for it, because when they stop growin'-"

"Hey, there's no call for that," Jack cut him off. "Ain't nobody in my family ever gone bald, and I sure as hell ain't gonna be the first. Despite the three of you doin' your best to make me an egghead."

Riley gave a very unladylike snort. "Not to worry, Jack," she told him. "No one would ever accuse you of being an egghead."

He simpered at her, miming a talking puppet with his hand, and Mac gave a low chuckle as Riley rolled her eyes, and she and Bozer returned to whatever they'd been doing before he'd so spectacularly interrupted them. Mac stayed comfortably slouched in the chair diagonally across the aisle, and Jack made a face at him.

"Yeah, you're the egghead. All that hair's gonna fall out one day, 'cause'a too much thinkin'. You mark my words."

"Duly marked," Mac promised, inclining his head and taking the opportunity to attempt a second hair-taming. His next question was said in exactly the same teasing voice. "How many of us did you lose?"

Jack kept making the face at him – for appearance's sake only – but dropped his voice so no one else would overhear. "Just you and me. Boze and Riley made it out okay."

One of Mac's eyebrows twitched, but that was the only surprise he showed. "So not a nightmare, then?"

Jack chuckled humorlessly. "Hard to say." Any time he lost Mac was a nightmare. "Actually, I think you mighta become an angel, and then started a dumpster fire."

Whatever Mac had been about to ask next was paused as he tried to untangle that. ". . . an angel."

"Bona fide." Jack used his hands to mimic flapping wings. "Fire saved Boze, though, so props."

Mac completely abandoned his previous line of questioning. "I saved Boze as an angel?"

"Yeah. You were a ghost first, though." Jack had to admit, it was one of the weirder ones.

"Ghosts . . . become angels?"

Jack shrugged. "To be honest, I really ain't sure. I, uh, sorta woke up before I got to that part." And he was more than thankful to Bozer for arranging it the way he had. Jack was pretty sure his next stop wouldn't have been Heaven.

Mac made a production of propping his feet up on the seat across from him – which was right next to Jack – and getting comfortable. Jack's ears had just popped, telling him they were beginning their descent, and had about twenty or so minutes. And Mac was well aware, because after Jack just looked at him politely, he gestured impatiently.

"I gotta hear about this one from the beginning."

That was a terrible place to start. "The beginning ain't pretty."

Mac's eyes grew a little more serious. Much as he liked to tease him, Mac was well aware of how truly unsettling Jack found some of his dreams. "Tell me anyway."

Jack gusted out a sigh. "Well, it started in a basement. Chain link pen, like you'd lock a dog up in. Guess you could say it started at the end, really. The whole ambush, the fight, I don't remember it at all, just that I knew it'd happened, an' that the whole team was screwed. I was already done for, yaddah yaddah." No need to paint too detailed a picture. "You traded the enemy intelligence to get invited to the party. Said some nice things," Jack admitted, then let his expression harden. "Then you damn well lied to my face, told me Riley'd gotten away and was callin' the cavalry, even though it wasn't true."

Mac looked unrepentant. "So you . . . died at the very beginning?"

Of course he wasn't going to focus on his transgression. "Yeah, I did." Jack took a second to wonder about that. "Actually, I think even after it happened I thought it was weird, but not weird enough to clue me in . . . anyway, you got yourself shot, Ri tried but she couldn't get 'em to call you a doctor. I was prolly a ghost by then but I didn't know it, so . . . sorry."

Mac pressed his lips together in sympathy. "So then we were ghosts."

"Yep." No need to mention the details. "After I yelled at you for lyin' to me – and I really think you would, now, so if it ever comes down to it, an' I'm dying, an' you're screwed, you just give it to me straight, okay, because there's nothin' worse than lyin' to a dyin' man, nothin' –"

Mac held up a hand. "Wait, are you seriously mad at me for lying to you – in a dream?"

"Damn right I am. Because I wouldn't put it past you." Jack pointed at his eyes, then back at Mac. "I'm watchin' you, hoss."

Mac stared at him another second, then just closed his mouth with a shake of his head. Once he felt like his point was made, Jack cleared his throat and continued.

"Anyway, the gun-runner – some Romanian guy – and his lieutenant started workin' on Riles, to get her to boopity-boop the intel you gave 'em, so we –"

"Wait." Mac had his skeptical face on. "Just two guys? We were – the whole team – completely screwed . . . and there were only two bad guys?"

Jack wasn't following. "Yeah?" I mean, clearly there had been a gang, he remembered skinheads in a car later -

"Jack . . ." Mac was smiling at him in honest confusion. "There's just no way two guys could . . . could get the drop on you like that. How could we _possibly_ not be able to take out two guys?"

Jack felt his eyebrows climbing. "You want me to tell you about this, or you just wanna poke holes in it?"

Mac leaned back and held up his hands in surrender, laughing quietly. "Sorry. Keep going."

"Thank you, I will then." Jack straightened irritably in his seat. "So you and me pulled a Swayze on 'em, got Riles and Boze out of the house, and Riley got a laptop, so." He didn't feel the need to explain that, and Mac nodded as if he was buying in again.

Of course he was. There was literally nothing Riley couldn't do if she had a laptop. That was just a fact.

"It took us a little while to figure out how 'ta . . . I called it Caspering, as in Casper-"

"The Friendly Ghost, I got it," Mac interrupted. "What kind of things could we do?"

Jack gave him a broad grin. "You, son, could do just about any damn thing you wanted. You facepalmed the Romanian dude, right were Ri'd already broken his nose, oh and then you full body tackled him a little later, which was a nice move, by the way, wish you'd try it in real life sometime-"

Mac's eyebrows had slowly been raising, but he accepted the compliment graciously.

"But my favorite hadda be when you were good and pissed, and the bad guy's goon was about to tail the Uber Bozer had just gotten into-"

" . . .the Uber . . .?"

"Now don't interrupt, it was Riley's idea and she ordered about a dozen of 'em, so it was a better plan than it sounds like," he defended, even though Riley was probably in the tech hub at the back of the plane and also, it was just a dream, "an' you were talkin' about how we could interrupt electrical whatever and so you hunkered down like Wolverine in front of the oncoming car and I dunno what you did, but that thing was totally wrecked after you were done. Bet it never started again."

Mac looked like he had more questions, so Jack pressed on. "But there was a downside. All that Casperin' used up our life energy, or souls, or whatever. You showin' off did you in." He sobered a little. "Lost ya twice in one day."

They were quiet a moment, then Mac nudged him with a foot. "It was just a dream, Jack."

"Yeah, I know." There he was, plenty alive and giving him crap about it, but that never made it hurt any less when it happened. "You'd think one day I'd learn. But you're the same Mac, you still nerd out, even in my dreams, y'know? You thought that we were able to zap the bad guys using static electricity."

Mac pursed his lips, glancing off into space for a second. "Actually," he mused, "you know, that might technically be possible . . ."

Jack blinked at him. "Really?"

Mac left his thinking face on for another few seconds, then dissolved into laughter. "No, Jack," he chuckled. "That absolutely would _not_ work, because there are no such things as ghosts, and even if there _were_ , they would not be able to generate static electricity because static is generated by-"

"All right all right all right, see, you're makin' my point for me, Mr. MIT." Jack slapped the foot near him, making Mac drop it back to the floor. "I dunno, though, everythin' just seems to . . to make sense when I'm in one."

The good-natured teasing vanished from Mac's face. "Well yeah. The same as with flashbacks. Soldiers report smelling gas, tasting blood, feeling pain –"

"Soldiers report?" Jack asked, quirking an eyebrow at him.

Mac held up his hands. "Can't say I have much experience, big guy."

"Can't say you don't neither." Bozer knowing exactly how to wake up a dreaming Jack Dalton proved as much.

"Fair enough. My point is, I don't doubt that it seems absolutely real and absolutely sensical in the dream."

"I didn't say I was cold –"

"No, not an ici-" Unfortunately, Mac caught on, and cut himself off with a scoff. "So when did I start – setting trash receptacles on fire?"

"Only after you evaporated," Jack told him, low and serious. "Got Boze out of a pickle while I was busy chasin' Riley all over Budapest. Then I kicked a lot of ass –"

"That sounds more like you -"

"-an' went and used up all my ammo too. Got to send the kids back home, safe and sound, and . . ." Jack spread his hands.

Mac nodded, and the pair fell quiet again. Jack glanced out the half-covered window beside him, barely making out the tarmac a few hundred feet below them through the rain clouds. Mac presumably followed his gaze.

"You ready to get this done?"

Jack snorted. "I was born ready."

"Sure you were," Mac agreed, slapping Jack's knee as he levered himself straighter in his seat. A few moments later they touched down, and after that the four of them regrouped in the tech hub as the plane taxied towards their ground transportation.

"Alright, Riley, what are we looking at?" Mac prompted, and she flashed him a grin. It was the first time he was having her run the briefing summary, and Jack treasured the little burst of pride he felt in his now-properly-beating heart.

"Intel hasn't changed. Our target is a weapons cache belonging to the Heves Torok, a group smuggling weapons through Hungary from Germany to their like-minded buddies in Egypt, Syria, and Iran. We know they receive the inventory physically from a German courier, and we think we know where the dead drop is. Bozer and I," and she raised her eyes from her tablet to her partner, getting a nod, "will hit the dead drop and recover the flash drive with the inventory. You and Jack," and she made eye contact with each of them, "will have eyes on the hotel lobby and surrounding block. We can't be sure when the courier will drop the drive, so Boze and I will hang out in the lobby disguised as millennials borrowing the free wifi, and as soon as we've got the drive, we regroup, decrypt, and securely upload to the Phoenix."

"I believe the term is, milk run," Bozer added with a beatific smile.

Mac was smiling, too, but there was something just a touch cautious under it. "Yeah, Boze, we try not to use that word in the field. You'll remember your first milk run, in Amsterdam?"

The young agent shuddered dramatically. "I really prefer not to, thanks –"

"Me too," Mac agreed. "So everyone on their toes. If you get made, bail and circle the block, and Jack will pick you up. Once I'm sure you're both clear, I'll follow suit. Comms?"

Riley offered up the box, and each agent took their custom-shaped earwig and tucked into place. Once testing was done, Mac looked at Riley expectantly, and she took the cue with only the tiniest flash of a whoopsie.

"Everyone good with the plan?"

Once she confirmed nods from them all, she glanced back at Mac, who inclined his head. "That's how it's done. Good job, that was textbook."

"Damn skippy. To the Batmobile!" Jack led the parade off the jetway and into their hunter green four-door sedan, getting settled in behind the wheel and trying to figure out where the damn windshield wiper controls were as the team piled in. Riley was their de facto navigator, and she soon had him on his way to the questionable Hotel Boheime, where all your smuggling dreams apparently came true.

The non-commercial landing strip was a little ways out of town, and their path took them through the surprisingly sprawling suburbs of Budapest. While Mac was extolling all the wonders of the city, Jack was eyeing first the houses, then the unexpected muddy park that popped up on their right. It was ridiculous, of course. He'd been to Budapest before, he must've just driven this route before –

The park gave way to another little neighborhood, then a more commercial street. They drove past a convenience mart, right on the corner, and standing right beside it, waiting on the light, was a young woman wearing a soaked-through denim jacket, with her disheveled hair piled to one side, the way Riley sometimes wore it.

Jack didn't realize he was staring until someone behind them honked, and Riley delicately cleared her throat. "One, eww, she's jailbait, and two, the light turned green like ten seconds ago."

Jack shook it off, accelerating maybe a little aggressively through the intersection. As they passed more and more buildings, buildings he'd walked past barefoot, Jack's doubt grew, and when they hit the corner with a three story stone building, clearly government and just as clearly standing empty, he couldn't take it any longer.

"New plan," he said shortly, glaring at the darkened lobby through the falling rain. "No one's splitting up. Mac and I will provide support from inside the hotel, we'll stash the car in the alley where they take deliveries."

No one else said a word; the windshield wipers got through three cycles before Mac, in the passenger seat beside him, finally glanced his way.

". . . Jack, I-"

"I'm not sendin' those two into gun-runner territory without overwatch, and if I leave you in the car, you'll just end up havin' to turn it into a missile launcher or somethin' anyway. There's plenty of traffic, gettin' a new vehicle won't be a problem." Jack glared at the administrative building until it had finally receded from the rear-view mirror, and reset his eyes on the US Consulate, which was only a block up, its American flag flying proudly over its gate.

Mac was silent in the seat beside him, just watching him, and Jack finally glanced at him, telling him without words or sign language that it was not up for debate. And after a second, Mac gave him a barely perceptible nod.

"You heard the man," he announced. "Riley, Bozer, you're still on the dead drop. Jack will be in the lobby with you, and I'll be on the door in the back."

There were quiet, confused murmurs of agreement from the back seat, and Jack gave Mac the faintest of smiles, knowing that he knew why, knowing that he didn't believe. Not in the dreams, anyway. _Thanks, bud._

Mac acknowledged by turning back to his own window as they passed the consulate, but tapping his middle finger twice on his leg, their Sandbox Shorthand.

_Let's do it._

-M-

FIN

-M-

So this one came from a prompt from a couple guest PMs, so whoever you are, I hope I nailed it – it as a combination of "when did Mac figure out Jack was so superstitious" and "when does Mac learn about Jack's dreams". I thought those were a lovely combination, so here we are.

I know it's not technically a first – I have plans to mention it in the sequel to Ground Rules and Decaf Coffee – but this would be the first time Riley became aware of Jack's dreams, and I thought it also nicely explains why Mac tolerates Jack's superstitions so well. Mac trusts Jack's gut in any variety of situations, and while he constantly makes fun of him for the vampires and the werewolves, I think at some point he must have noticed a correlation between Jack freaking out for no reason, and Jack freaking out for good reason.

Plus it was just fun. This was actually meant to be a little more light-hearted than it turned out, but hopefully there were enough clues and plot-holes in Jack's dream that you were able to figure it out.


	10. Cold Water

Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.

-x-

Even before he dismounted the snowmobile, Carter knew it wasn't good.

There was a short line of Korean men on their knees, hands restrained behind them, being held at gunpoint. Their parkas all gaped open, showing they'd been searched and disarmed. Their breath was steaming in front of them; some were still panting. Clearly the fight had only just ended.

Flanking them were the four men Joshua Carter had tried his best to beat to the site. As for Dalton and MacGyver, the two men he'd been sent to retrieve?

Nowhere to be seen.

Carter patted his tandem buddy on the back in warning as McMurtrie brought their vehicle to a smooth halt, then slipped off the seat into significantly deeper snow than he'd been expecting. Only his partner's quick reflexes kept him from faceplanting.

Just what you wanted to do in front of a four man Spetsnaz team.

"Thanks," he grunted quietly, and McMurtrie hummed an acknowledgement, also dismounting the vehicle.

The team lead of the Spetsnaz unit watched them silently, as icy as the Siberian landscape around them. His camouflage, like that of his team, was military issue and blended perfectly with the rocks, scraggly pine, and snow. It bore no badge or rank indicators. If what was visible of his face hadn't matched the image Thornton had sent them half an hour ago, Carter would have shot the man where he stood. After a moment of cold study, the Russian commander gestured at a natural-looking hollow in a nearby snowbank.

"Vashi ofitsery tam."

_Your officers are over there._

Joshua Carter took in the spot, and the disturbed snow around the entrance. There was no hint of movement, no call of greeting.

"My nashli eto u terroristov." The Spetsnaz commander extended a gloved hand, and McMurtrie trudged forward in the snow to accept a small, hot pink USB drive, tied to a torn nylon cord.

_We found this on the terrorists._

The intelligence their agents had been sent to collect. The Russians had taken it off the North Koreans they'd just apprehended. Which meant those men – all of whom had been heavily armed, if the pile of discarded weapons nearby was to be believed – had already encountered the DXS agents, and taken it from them by force.

Carter glared at the line of five men, held at gunpoint by two of the Russian unit, then started without a word for the hollow their commander had indicated.

His partner could handle the logistics.

McMurtrie didn't disappoint, explaining in fluent Russian that the rest of their team was five minutes out, and Carter hunkered down in front of the hollow. Now that he was kneeling, he could see it was actually a tunnel, with a sort of natural ramp leading up into the bank.

Behind him, one of the Russians called out. "Delayte chto khotite, no delayte eto bystro. Pogoda bystro portitsya."

_Do as you please, but do it quickly. The weather is deteriorating rapidly._

So not much time to gather evidence.

Not that they needed it, Carter chastised himself mentally as he pushed further into the snow, angling his chest up the ramp. It wasn't like there was any mystery as to what had happened to their agents; the only question would be whether they'd been cut down with North Korean rounds or Russian. Josh's head popped up in a dim but surprisingly roomy interior chamber, almost like an igloo dome, and less than twelve inches from his face was another face, decidedly younger. What was visible of it was an impossible blue.

Agent MacGyver was very clearly dead.

Behind his body was another, just as blue, tucked tight against his back to conserve heat. Not that it had done either of them any good. MacGyver and Dalton had frozen to death.

Carter stared at the fallen agents a moment, then gusted out a sigh. His balaclava did an excellent job of hiding the steam from his exhale, and even though he knew just by their color that it was pointless, he reached into the little snow cave and put his gloved hand on MacGyver's chest. Under the soft parka the body was hard and unyielding, clearly frozen solid.

Great. Bad weather incoming, and their bodies were stiff as boards.

Carter wiggled his way mostly out of the snow cave. They were definitely going to need excavation equipment, and it took him a moment to remember the correct phrasing. "Nam . . . ponadobitsya zemleroynaya tekhnika."

The nearest Spetsnaz officer glanced at him, then scoffed. "Prinosite vesnoy vse, chto khotite.

_Bring all you want in the spring._

As if they were going to leave theirs behind. Carter shook his head and ducked back up into the snow cave. "And here I thought the Russians had no sense of humor," he muttered to himself, glancing around the dim space to see how much wiggle room they had.

It wasn't much.

When he looked back down at the body in front of him, it looked back.

"Jesus-!" He flinched back, banging his head into the side of the snow dome, and a large chunk of it broke free and tumbled down his back. For a split second he thought he'd brought the whole thing down on top of them, but after a few seconds the avalanche of snow abated, and Carter shook it from his eyes sharply, trying to see –

"-whoa-"

A firm hand grasped the sleeve of his parka, trying to keep him from moving, and Josh stared at it in total disbelief. MacGyver had sat up a little, his other hand on the concave ceiling, looking a little apprehensive himself.

If a dead man could look apprehensive.

"Mac-"

"We're fine, just – everybody go slow, okay?"

Behind MacGyver, Jack Dalton sat up stiffly, also eyeing the ceiling uncertainly. "How about everybody go _out_? That work?"

MacGyver gave a weak chuckle. "That, uh, that works for me. That work for you?"

It took Carter a second to realize the last had been directed at him, and that the young agent had already released him. Dalton shot him a 'move your ass' look, and Carter managed to find his voice again.

"Uh . . . sure. Sure," he repeated, and then slithered back out the somewhat-collapsed tunnel. By the time he'd fully backed out he felt another hand on his shoulder – McMurtrie – and then his partner was hauling him to his feet.

"Shit, you okay?"

Which was a very good question. He hesitated for a second, staring at the tunnel he'd just crawled out of. Could that have been a - a hallucination brough on by . . . claustrophobia . . .? "Uh – fine," he said dismissively, quickly brushing down his ice-covered coat. "What's the ETA on the snowcat?"

McMurtrie gave him a suspicious look, but then flipped back the cuff of his glove to glance at his watch. "Another few minutes tops. Did the whole thing collapse?"

"Nope." Carter finished brushing off his parka and reached back to shake the snow out of the hood, trying his best to look nonchalant. "How do you say, we don't need that digging equipment after all?"

"Nam ne nuzhna eta zemleroynaya tekhnika," McMurtrie translated slowly. ". . . why . . .?" Some kind of scuffling behind him caught his partner's attention, and Carter forced himself to stand their casually when his partner's eyes widened. "What - ?!"

He was not the only one who was not expecting to see someone else emerge from the snow cave. The nearest Spetsnaz soldier actually swore - in Russian – and snapped up his rifle, and Carter calmly stepped into his line of fire, raising a hand to wave him down.

"Relax, comrade. It's fine."

Behind him, a few muffled voices silenced any further discussion. "-easy, watch the ankle-"

"-chief, it's my ankle, pretty sure I know to watch it –"

The other Russians were edging forward, weapons raised and clearly as shocked as their teammate – and their prisoners. Carter turned in time to see Dalton basically tip over in slow motion from the tunnel onto the packed snow, clearly favoring his left leg and looking uncannily like a clumsy zombie. Not two seconds later, another pair of boots appeared, and MacGyver shimmied out of the tunnel, much more gracefully than his partner.

Both alive. Clearly alive, their breath was steaming in the frigid air, yet both their faces were still a dull, lifeless blue.

The two agents blinked owlishly in the light – it was overcast but definitely brighter out here than in there – and took in the rifles pointed their way. Carter smirked at the Russian commander, knowing it was hidden behind his balaclava but audible in his voice. "Chto? Razve vashi lyudi ne mogut etogo sdelat?

_What? Can't your people do that?_

The North Koreans, who hadn't made a peep since they'd arrived, started muttering among themselves. Carter wasn't as fluent in Korean, but he picked out the words for 'spirit' and 'immortal.' The rumbling of the approaching snowcat drowned out anything else, until the Russian still flanking them kicked one, earning a yelp.

McMurtrie hurried over to the two DXS agents, beginning a hushed conversation Carter couldn't really catch. That was fine; Carter was already digging in his parka for his satphone.

This was going to require some explanation.

The snowcat had fully arrived and the other three agents assigned to the DXS exfil team had piled out, all visibly wary, before the satellite call connected. Carter waved his teammates on towards Dalton and his partner.

"Carter. What's the situation on the ground."

If the director didn't already know, that meant the approaching inclement weather their Russian friends had mentioned had apparently taken out satellite overwatch. Not ideal, and Carter was glad his balaclava hid his frown. "We've recovered Agents Dalton and MacGyver, as well as a flash drive. However, your friends from the Kremlin beat us here. I don't know if they're going to part with the five heavily armed North Koreans they happened to find stumbling around in the middle of the Siberian tundra."

Honestly, he was stunned they'd given up the USB drive. They probably wouldn't have if they'd realized the two DXS agents were actually alive. The Russian government didn't typically take kindly to foreign nationals exchanging classified nuclear intelligence on their turf, and since the Spetsnaz clearly only offered up the drive because they thought the Americans were otherwise going to walk away empty-handed, they sure as hell weren't going to surrender the people who had brought that USB drive onto Russian soil.

The director, too, seemed cautious when she replied. "They didn't find the flash drive?"

"They did," Carter replied, equally carefully. "At least they offered us one, right make and model." One thing he could say about North Korean tech – it didn't exist. For years South Korea and other countries, including the US and Israel, had been using leftover, civilian-donated USB drives to smuggle content into the news-starved dictatorship. Everything from K-pop and dubstep to how-to manuals on democracy. No Spetsnaz soldier would have had a hot pink leopard-print USB drive on them just on the off chance they ran into a few North Korean agents posing as defectors.

The drive was probably the real thing.

"Did you recover our agents alive?"

Trust Thornton to come to the same conclusion he had. "Sort of," Carter hedged, even as he turned to watch Dalton swatting McMurtrie away from his ankle. "They're . . . walking and talking, at any rate."

Mostly.

There was a brief pause as the director apparently decided not to continue that line of questioning. "All right. The mission was for the drive, not the human assets. Don't give them the Koreans unless they insist, but don't stay to haggle. If you're not back to Baykit in under an hour, you're not going to be able to fly out at all."

"Understood, ma'am."

"We'll debrief in the air."

"Yes ma'am." Carter took the brick-like phone from his ear and disconnected the call, then turned to find the Spetsnaz commander had already herded the Koreans onto their feet.

Josh immediately headed for the man. "Kak ty dumayesh', ty idesh'?"

_Where do you think you're going?_

In answer, the Russian gave him a cold look – and then his eyes flicked back to MacGyver and Dalton, without blinking. What he said, as best Carter could paraphrase, was "You do not have room for them in your vehicle. My government would not leave them to die in the cold."

 _No, that's just our agents you'd leave to die in the cold,_ he growled mentally, but the commander was right. There were seven DXS agents, and the 'cat could only carry eight. The more weight they put on it, the slower the trek back to the regional airstrip would be. The mission had never been about bringing any of the North Koreans back stateside.

And the Spetsnaz didn't wait for his agreement. They shouted commands to their prisoners and headed off into the swirling, dusty snow flurry that was starting to kick up all around them.

The Russians' logistics were not his problem, and Joshua Carter hustled back to the snowcat. McMurtrie was handing the snowmobile to another one of the exfil team, clearly just as curious as he was, and Carter climbed into the large vehicle even as it roared back to life.

"We don't get to Baykit in twenty, we're spending the week," he told the driver of the 'cat, and Gabe Pinion, their exfil pilot, wasted no time in getting the vehicle turned. McMurtrie hauled himself into the cabin, and then they were off.

On the middle bench of the snowcat, Dalton and MacGyver were getting checked out by their exfil medic, a young man Carter only knew by name – Kevin Todd - and reputation. He didn't look to be a day older than his current patient, and MacGyver frowned a little at him as he obediently pulled off one of his gloves. His hand was the same color as his face.

"Been sucking on ten ruble coins lately?" the medic asked him acerbically, clamping a pulse and blood ox meter onto said blue-grey finger, and MacGyver blinked at him.

"Uh – no, it's not argyria." He said it like it was supposed to be some kind of assurance. "Just a little _Isatis tinctoria_."

It was the medic's turn to blink at MacGyver, even as he absently clamped another one of the devices onto Dalton's equally bloodless finger. ". . . woad?"

Of all the words they'd used, that was about the only one Carter recognized. ". . . woad? Like Mel Gibson Braveheart woad?"

Beside MacGyver, Dalton groaned and slumped in his seat. "Dude, don't get him started on Braveheart, just don't-"

His young partner shot him a sideways look. "Well there was no reason to mix pre-roman Celt warpaint traditions with tartan kilts, which weren't adopted until hundreds of years later-"

"Second verse, same as the first, man. Just stow the rant, please-"

"So it's . . . warpaint?" Carter gestured at his own face for context, and MacGyver looked up at him.

"Dye, but yes. _Isatis tinctorial_ grows wild in Siberia, and it's a perennial. The roots don't have as much pigment as the leaves, obviously, but –"

"You realize that organic dyes soak readily into dry skin?" the medic interrupted. "You might as well have tattooed yourselves with henna."

It appeared that Dalton did not in fact know this, because he suddenly froze, then turned with dangerous slowness to glare at his partner, who had suddenly found his pulse ox meter fascinating. ". . . no, doc, _someone_ must have forgotten to mention it-"

"I diluted it, Jack." This was said with that same reassuring confidence, that it did not appear Dalton was buying. "We'll be a little blue for a few days, a week max."

"A week?!" the former Delta exploded. "Are you kidding me?!"

"Would you rather be dead?" his very blue-grey partner asked him with a touch of heat.

"Well, if I gotta be dead, I'd rather not be a Smurf, thank you very much-"

The medic glanced between the two of them. "Besides the dye job, any injuries I need to know about?"

Dalton completely ignored him and instead reached urgently for his hair. "You put this on my scalp, dude, did you seriously just dye my hair blue?"

"Only the grey ones." There was a smirk on MacGyver's face as he said it, and then the two agents devolved into what looked a lot like –

Rough-housing?

But that made no sense. "I – I checked you, you were frozen solid," Carter tried, and the two wrestling agents silently came to some sort of truce, settling back in their seats with apologetic looks at the disapproving medic in front of them.

"Jack's ankle's sliced up," MacGyver finally reported to the medic, earning his second murderous look of the day from Dalton, and then the young man unzipped his parka. "As for being frozen solid . . ." From underneath his polar fleece shirt, he produced a concave, white ceramic rectangle about six inches by eight inches.

Carter recognized it instantly, even as the agent fished out a second. "That's a ballistic armor insert."

MacGyver nodded, tucking the two ceramic plates into a pocket in the 'cat's door. "The Russians designed them this shape intentionally, not just to align more comfortably to a human torso, but to double as snow shovels."

Which explained how they'd dug that snow cave. Carter just stared at the young agent, completely dumbstruck. " . . . so the plan was to – to hold your breath and play dead?"

"Didn't have to." MacGyver was briefly distracted when Dalton hissed, and the medic shot the man half a glare.

"I've got to get the boot off to see the injury-"

"You mind not taking my foot off with it?" Dalton grumbled. "Just gimme a second-"

"Any particular reason why it doesn't match your other boot?" McMurtrie inquired lightly from the back bench, offering both agents a bottle of water, and Dalton accepted one, continuing to make pained noises as the medic worked the boot off what looked like shreds of bloodied undershirt.

"Yeah, there is," Jack groaned as his foot finally popped free. "You know what happens when you bury razor-wire under three feet of snow?" Outside of a slight wince from his partner, none of them volunteered an answer, and it didn't look like Dalton expected one. "Nothing," he continued curtly. "Absolutely fucking nothing besides you can't see the shit until you've stepped in it."

"When did this happen?" the medic asked, grabbing a pair of EMT shears from his kit.

"About thirty-two hours ago," MacGyver replied promptly, his voice a little stiff in comparison to just a moment ago, and he shook his head as McMurtrie offered him the water bottle again. All his focus seemed to be on Dalton. "Best we could do was a field dressing. I didn't want to ice it, given the circumstances-"

"Thirty-two hours?" Carter couldn't help himself. "We didn't pick up your distress beacon until about six hours ago." Then a terrible thought occurred to him. "You were recaptured."

Dalton's partner glanced at him, but his focus was again drawn almost immediately to Jack's injury as the medic hacked away at the blood-crusted dressing. "We weren't. Recaptured," he elaborated. "The beacon was damaged, the higher priority was getting out of the elements."

"The beacon was damaged," Carter echoed. "So you . . . you spent the night in that snow bank?"

"Trust me, diggin' it out warmed us up plenty," Jack groused, wrinkling his nose as the bloodied dressing was peeled away to reveal red, angry skin. At least this skin wasn't blue-grey; it looked swollen, but definitely alive, and the medic manipulated it gently, then shoved Jack's pant leg up his ankle and shin to inspect the flesh there.

"I was worried about the boot cutting off circulation, but we didn't have anything else waterproof to protect it." This was clearly for the medic's benefit, and after frowning at Jack's injuries, he gently set the mangled foot heel-first on the used dressing and starting pawing through his kit again.

"No sign of frostbite," the medic informed them, ripping into a package of gauze. "There's a little infection starting up, but all things considered, it's not too bad."

"See, dude, I told you." Now Jack was trying to sound like the reasonable one. "Boot took the worst of it, and it wasn't your fault anyway. Besides, it was toasty warm in that little snow cave, just like you said."

Carter felt himself frown. The concept of igloos was not foreign to him; Dalton was head of DXS security and he made sure at least one man on every tac team had had SERE training – Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. He knew snow was a decent insulator, and it was about seventeen degrees out there, as opposed to the negative twenty it would be in a few short hours. Their body heat from doing the digging would have warmed up the air –

"So when you say you didn't have to hold your breath . . ."

It was because the air had been warm enough that MacGyver's breath wouldn't have steamed. Neither had Carter's, come to think of it. He hadn't even noticed it, getting out of the wind was such a relief that the skin of his face had already felt warmed.

MacGyver nodded again, not even looking at him. "Ambient temp was probably around fifty near the ceiling. There wasn't exactly enough room in there for someone else to crawl in and really check."

Behind them, on the back bench, McMurtrie sucked his teeth. "Hell of a risk," he disagreed. "Those North Koreans didn't notice when they snagged the USB off you? They must've searched you-"

"Yeah, that's what I said," Jack groused, his lips thinning with discomfort as some kind of cream was briskly slathered into the deep lacerations on his ankle and the bridge of his foot.

But MacGyver was shaking his head. "North Koreans are fairly superstitious. It was a fair guess that they'd do what you did, try to figure out if they could easily drag us out of the cave to search us. Add to that the intel wasn't exactly camouflaged-"

"Unless you're a cheetah in a flamingo patch-"

MacGyver stopped, then, his brow creasing. "I think you mean flamboyance."

Dalton glanced at his partner. "What?"

"A group of flamingos is called a flamboyance."

"He's right," McMurtrie confirmed, and when Jack craned his head around to stare at the other agent, McMurtrie offered him a shrug. "What? I do a lot of crosswords."

"Flamingos notwithstanding," MacGyver interrupted, in a slightly pained way as if this happened frequently, "I knew they'd figure out we were alive if they looked too closely, so I didn't make the drive hard to find."

Of course. Bright pink USB drive around his neck or in the front pocket of the parka, no need to drag him out or handle him. "So you basically just gave it to them."

MacGyver blinked, as if he'd only just remembered that he didn't actually have the drive anymore, and started patting down the interior pockets of the parka. Carter beat him to it and dangled the USB drive in front of him, and MacGyver grinned in triumph and withdrew a blue fist from his parka, holding –

Something slim and matte black with a USB connector on the end.

"Don't put that in your pocket unless you want damp pants," he advised Carter, and Josh blinked at him, then popped the cap off the USB stick he was holding.

It _also_ had a USB connector, but when Carter pulled on it, it came loose easily, revealing that the rest of the drive casing was packed with snow. For weight. The actual data had never left DXS possession.

"Once I got the emergency beacon working, I knew you'd locate us, I just couldn't be sure when. There was a chance they'd plug it in then and there and realize what we'd done, but with a storm coming in . . ."

"And if they did figure it out?"

Dalton smirked. "Then the first two woulda gotten a bullet. After that, I'd've had to play it by ear."

"I was gonna ask why you were using your partner as a human shield," Carter told him drily, and Dalton's smirk turned a bit darker before he flinched in his seat.

"Damn, dude!"

"Hold still," the medic admonished him, applying butterfly bandages. "This will have to be debrided before we can stitch you up. We'll do it on the plane."

Carter turned from the pair of still very strange-looking agents and up to the driver. "How we doin', Gabe?"

"We'll make it, but it'll be close," he called back, looking at them via the mirror. "Can't guarantee you a smooth ride."

"It's his ankle, not his face," the medic replied acerbically. "Doesn't have to be pretty."

"Hey," Dalton protested. "I have great lookin' ankles, and you better keep 'em that way!"

-x-

They barely got to the helo in Baykit before the temperature had dropped too low to fly the hop to a decent airfield, and Carter was half-frozen himself by the time they all piled tiredly into a wonderfully heated fixed wing and taxied down the runway.

"Coffee?"

"God yes. Please," Dalton added, and McMurtrie smirked at him knowingly before crossing the aisle for the galley. Jack was still admiring his air cast, probably because the longer it stayed on the longer it would be before Todd had to do unpleasant things to the lacerated ankle inside of it. None of them had even bothered to take off their parkas yet, but MacGyver was in the process of peeling off his gloves, and Carter _still_ hadn't gotten used to the fact that his hands were the same deathly blue-grey as his face.

"Dude," Carter murmured, unzipping his own parka, "I really feel like we should call in an exorcist or something."

"Doesn't work on zombies," Dalton replied immediately, letting his head tip back onto the headrest. It snapped back up two seconds later. "But that gives me an idea for infiltratin' that silo-"

"They'd still shoot you," his partner interrupted, laying his soggy gloves to air-dry on the armrest beside him. "And no matter how much you look like the undead, you are not impervious to bullets."

Dalton's face fell. "Yeah, guess you're right," he grumbled. "Y'don't think the awe factor'd buy us anything?"

The young blond agent paused, as if truly thinking about it, and a chime rang through the cabin. In front of them, the TV blinked to life, and the face of Director Patricia Thornton glared out at them.

"Patty," Jack greeted her cheerfully, and Carter suppressed a wince only with the help of fifteen years' experience in covert operations. "Thanks for sendin' the cavalry."

"I shouldn't have had to," she half-growled, apparently deciding to address one travesty at a time. "What happened?" Her frown deepened as she took them in, and Dalton gave her a dazzling grin and opened his mouth.

"Sorry about the theatrics," MacGyver apologized smoothly, cutting off his partner. "And the timetable. We were able to infiltrate the meet with the North Koreans –"

"-but the intel was way off," Jack continued, with a dark look at the camera. "You told us a small envoy, eight max. They had half a damn platoon."

"I gave you what the State Department had at the time." It was neither an apology or an excuse, somehow. "Did they have it?"

MacGyver dipped his head. "They did," he confirmed solemnly, and glanced at Carter. In answer, Josh patted the laptop beside him.

"Checked and vetted. They were the real deal."

The director's eyes narrowed slightly; that was all the emotion she showed. "And did they volunteer where they acquired said codes?"

"Not forthcomin' on that topic, and we really didn't get much time to chat about it," Dalton told her, his tone indicating exactly how happy he was about it. "Russians took 'em all alive, though, might get it out of 'em. Any chance that'd filter back to us?"

 _Maybe a fat chance_ , Carter thought to himself. Those Spetsnaz were probably still kicking themselves for not checking the bodies more carefully. His eyes again flicked to the two agents. Dalton, he knew well. Hell, the guy had recruited him. His partner was a little more of a mystery. MacGyver was the youngest agent they had, and honestly, who in their right mind would play dead using ballistic armor plates and blue dye?

At the very least, MacGyver would have been protected if the Koreans had realized it and opened fire, the inserts would have saved him. Having Dalton behind him with a pistol tucked out of sight was the right play. But the entire situation, on the run in Siberia, digging a freakin' snow cave, making a dummy USB drive so the data would still be recovered by DXS if it all went south . . .

It was smart. But weird.

The guy was _weird_.

The agents gave Thornton the same rundown they'd given in the snowcat, and not once did the director appear surprised or impressed with MacGyver's ingenuity. It was like she had actually expected to find her agents sitting there looking for all the world like frozen corpses. Like this was normal behavior.

And hell, maybe it was.

"Sleep on the flight. I'll need you on a briefing with the Joint Chiefs when you touch down." She paused. "Preferably more presentable."

Undoubtedly to share anything else they knew about how the North Koreans had valid US nuclear launch codes. Neither Dalton nor MacGyver looked surprised, and then the flatpanel blinked off.

"Always a pleasure," Dalton called to the empty screen, then grimaced a little and settled back in his seat, the coffee McMurtrie had gotten him wrapped tightly in his hands.

Carter's partner nodded at the darkened monitor. "And here I thought she just did that to us."

"Nope, she's pretty much always like that," Carter confirmed, as Todd entered the main cabin with his medical kit. The second Dalton saw him, he withdrew his injured ankle protectively towards the bottom of his seat.

"No, Gabe said there'd be turbulence-"

"We're already at fourteen thousand," the medic cut him off, taking a knee in front of Dalton's seat. "Give."

Jack scowled at the medic and did no such thing, and his young partner elbowed him. "He's going to give you some lidocaine before he stitches it up. It'll feel a lot better."

"No it won't," Jack contradicted, his face crumpling a little into childish protest. "It'll feel like nothin', right up until it feels like somethin' again, and that somethin' ain't gonna feel good."

"I can always let it go septic and fall off," Kevin offered without looking up, arranging his tools on a sterile towel.

Dalton whined a few more times, but between the two younger men he lost, and when the needle came out with the promised lidocaine he averted his eyes to the plane window. Oddly, this made MacGyver more talkative, and soon he had Jack trying to get the blue dye off his face with a wet wipe, laughing in spite of himself. And even though Dalton couldn't bring himself to look, Carter watched MacGyver observing for him, his bright, intelligent eyes taking in every move Kevin Todd was making with his partner's ankle.

 _He feels responsible_ , Carter realized slowly. _He thinks the injury was his fault_.

MacGyver was definitely the asset in their partnership; it was Dalton's job to keep him alive and safe while he did what he did. But clearly no one had told that young man. He was behaving just as protectively as Dalton would have been if their roles were reversed.

Beside him, McMurtrie finally settled into a seat, holding his own coffee. "Remind you of anyone?" he murmured in his ear, and Carter scoffed and struggled out of his parka.

He definitely wasn't a normal agent, but - weird or not - Carter was kinda starting to like him.

"Jury's still out," he replied, and then went to get the still very blue agents another few packets of wet wipes.

**FIN**

-x-

Many folks have written a 'first time people meet Mac' and I thought I would take a whack at it, plus I just loved the idea of zombie Mac and Jack. The way that Mac is respected at Phoenix is of course earned and well deserved, and the show starts long after that earning occurred, so much as I enjoyed introducing Saito to Mac, I thought there probably should be a stand-alone where other experienced agents and tactical officers started getting used to Mac's odd ideas, and started having a little faith that as improbable as they seem, they get the job done.

Also, zombies! And we could all use a little fluff today. Hang in there, everyone. 2020 is almost in the rear view mirror.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Love, Lies, & Deception](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28700127) by [Imcalledzorro](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Imcalledzorro/pseuds/Imcalledzorro)




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